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A
* "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."
Edward Abbey* "By doubting, we come to examine, and by examining, so we perceive the truth."
Peter Abelard* "The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."
Dean Acheson* "Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men."
Jane Adams* "Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn."
Joseph Addison* "There is more beauty in the works of a great genius who is ignorant of all the rules of art, than in the works of a little genius, who not only knows but scrupulously observes them."
Joseph Addison* "'We are always doing,' says he, something for Posterity, but I would fain see Posterity do something for us."
Joseph Addison* "Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not words. Trust movement."
Alfred Adler* "It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them."
Alfred Adler* "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
Lord Acton* "Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history."
Lord Acton* "A friend in power is a friend lost."
Henry Brooks Adams* "What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn."
Henry Brooks Adams* "The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of humour that ends by killing the victim's sympathies."
Henry Brooks Adams* "The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love; and something to hope for."
Joseph Addison* "A person should always consider how much they have more than they want, and how much more unhappy they might be than they really are."
Joseph Addison* "Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment: cheerfulness keeps up a kind of day-light in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity."
Joseph Addison* "The good Lord set definite limits on man's wisdom, but set no limits on his stupidity and that's just not fair."
Konrad Adenauer* "It is always in season for old men to learn."
Aeschylus* "Good judgment comes from experience, and experience--well that comes from poor judgment."
Aesop* "It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow."
Aesop* "The truth which makes people free is for the most part the truth which people prefer not to hear."(*)
Herbert Agar* "If you plant turnips you will not harvest grapes."
Akan proverb* "There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us, that it's rather hard to tell which of us ought to reform the rest of us."
Alain-Fournier* "Aloneness is inevitable in being human. People cannot accept this. They should be aware of it and use it. It heightens your perception."
Edward Albee* "Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."
Louisa May Alcott* "To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent--that is to triumph over old age."
Thomas Bailey Aldrich* "No ruling class in the whole of history has given up power voluntarily and I don't see that changing."
Tariq Ali* "More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."
Woody Allen* "I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens."
Woody Allen* "If a person's foresight were as good as their hindsight, we would all get somewhere."
American proverb* "To know how to grow old is the masterwork of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living."
Henri Frederic Amiel* "Doing easily what others find is difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius."
Henri Frederic Amiel* "To live is not just to survive, but to thrive with passion, compassion, some humour and style."
Maya Angelou* We Gather Together/We Continue
To Know is to comprehend.
Do you know, do you comprehend,
in this moment, who or what
you serve?
We all must be serving
someone or something,
Whom or what are you choosing
to serve right now?
It takes courage
to ask this question of yourself.
But without courage, you can't practice
Any other value consistently.
Maya Angelou* "You can't predict the future but you can prepare for it."
Anonymous* "There is a past which is gone for ever; but there is a future which is still our own work."
Anonymous* "Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference."
Anonymous* "If you're not riding the wave of change--you'll find yourself beneath it."
Anonymous* "Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered you will never grow."
Anonymous* "There is a wonderful, mystical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life--happiness, freedom, and peace of mind--are always attained by giving them to someone else."
Anonymous* "Live this day as if your last."
Anonymous* "A bend in the road, is not the end of the road . . . unless you fail to make the turn."
Anonymous* "Wise men learn by other men's mistakes, fools by their own."
Anonymous
* Those people who think life is a problem haven't got enough to worry about."
Anonymous (BL)* "A person who wants to lead the orchestra must be willing to face the music."
Anonymous (BL)* "It is a law of human life, as certain as gravity: to live fully, we must learn to use things and love people . . . not love things and use people."
Anonymous* "Visionary sights unseen see future shapes never made from thoughts unthought which imagine the unimaginable in new colour vision of everything out there but not as we know it."
Anonymous* "Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself." (*)
Anonymous* "If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword."
Anonymous* "Keep your face to the sun and you cannot see the shadow."
Anonymous* "Your attitude, almost always determines your attitude in life."
Anonymous* "The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will."
Anonymous* "The harder you work . . . the luckier you get."
Anonymous* Never doubt that a group of thoughtful committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has."
Anonymous* "A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of can I drove . . . but the world m ay be different because I was important in the life of a child."
Anonymous* "The happiness of your life is in direct proportion to the character of your thoughts."
Anonymous* "Snowflakes are one of nature's most finest things, but just look at what they can do when they stick together."
Anonymous* "Success is a journey, not a destination."
Anonymous* "Attitudes are contagious . . . is yours worth catching."
Anonymous* "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreeams."
Anonymous* "I cannot change yesterday I can only make the most of today, and look with hope towards tomorrow."
Anonymous* "Yesterday us but a dream. Tomorrow, a vision of hope. Look to this day for its life."
Anonymous* "In life what sometimes appears to be the end is really a new beginning."
Anonymous* "You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the share."
Anonymous* "A little push in the right direction can make a big difference."
Anonymous* "Unless the effectiveness of our learning is greater than the nature of change is unlikely to be equated with progress."
Anonymous* "All things by immortal power are
To one another joined
So that one cannot disturb a flower
Without the troubling of a star."
Anonymous* "If God was looking for a hiding place he'd hide in Human Beings because that the last place they would think of looking for him."
Anonymous* "No matter what happens, there is always someone who knew it would. . . ."
Anonymous* Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money and power and influence."
Anonymous* "Not every word requires an answer."
Anonymous* A person who does nothing never has time to do anything." (*)
Anonymous* "People have little idea of what they are capable of until they try."
Anonymous* "There are ten good things for which no person has ever been sorry:
For doing good to all;
For speaking evil of no one;
For hearing before judging;
For thinking before speaking;
For holding and angry tongue;
For being kind to the distressed;
For asking pardon for all wrongs;
For being patient toward everybody;
For stopping the ear to the tale bearer;
For dis-believing the most of the evil reports.
Anonymous* "Love is the sunshine of the soul. Without it we get hard and sour and we never grow into what we could be. Love sweetens the bitterness of experience and softens the core of selfishness that is inherent in human nature."
Anonymous* "If you lose your temper don't look for it."
Anonymous
* "If you wake up in the morning
With your hardest job to do.
Don't start the day with grumbling--
That won't help you see it through.
Be glad for work that's difficult,
For tasks that challenge you!
Workers find a thousand blessings
The idle never knew.
Anonymous* "All progress requires change but not all change is progress."
Anonymous* "The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything really badly that reason says you have little or no chance of getting."
Anonymous* "Jealously is much more about insecurity than love"
Anonymous* "It is human to err, but diabolical to persevere."
Anonymous* "There are too many people praying for mountains of difficulty to be removed, when what they really need is courage to climb them."
Anonymous* "Death is nature's was of telling you to slow down."
Anonymous* "The law doth punish man or woman
That steals the goose from off the common,
But lets the greater felon loose,
That steals the common from the goose."
Anonymous* "Policies without principles
Pleasure without conscience
Wealth without work
Knowledge without character
Industry without morality
Science without humanity
Worship without sacrifice"
Anonymous* "There is no limit to what people can do, or where they can go, if they don't mind who gets the credit."
Anonymous* "Friction doesn't make the world go round, it just shows that it is."
Anonymous* "The past should be a springboard not a hammock."
Anonymous* "Children spend too little time listening to their elders but too much time attempting to imitiate them." ("Don't do as I do, do as I say.")
Anonymous* "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world; and that is an idea whose time has come."
Anonymous* "Anything which parents have not learned from experience they can now learn from their children."
Anonymous* "It's not what you'd do with a million.
If riches should e'er be your lot,
But what are yoiu doing at present
With the dollar and a half you've got?"
Anonymous* "If you are going to have ideas ahead of the times you will have to get used to living with the fact that most people are going to believe you are in the wrong."
Anonymous (BL)* "Happiness is the engine of progress. All progress starts with dissatifaction."
Anonymous* "Everyone should sweep before their own door." (*)
Anonymous* "Every time history repeats itself the price goes up."
Anonymous* "The rich who help the poor make their lives richer."
Anonymous* "What is the use of running when you are on the wrong road?"
Anonymous* "Learn as if you were to live for ever; live as if you were to die tomorrow."
Anonymous* "All progress requires change but all change is not progress."
Anonymous* "There are three kinds of people in the world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, those who wonder what happened."
Anonymous* "Imagination is more important than knowledge; it is the preview of life's coming attractions."
Anonymous* "For evil to triumph all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing."
Anonymous* "The greatest thing to leave children is the love they have in them not the inheritance you might leave them."
Anonymous* "If people go on exploiting the world as if there was no tomorrow, there will be no tomorrow."
Anonymous* "Pretty much all the honest truthtelling there is in the world is done by children."
Anonymous* "Confess that you were wrong yesterday; it will show that you are wise today."
Anonymous* "If you want a peice of the pie you must always try to sit close to the person with the knife."
Anonymous* "There is a wonderful, mystical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life--happiness, freedom, and peace of mind--are always attained by giving them to someone else."
Anonymous* "Life becomes tragic to him who has plenty to live on but little to live for."
Anonymous* "If you think you're beaten, you are
If you think you daren't, you don't
If you'd like to win but think
you can't
If's almost certain you won't
If you think you'll lose, you're lost
For out in the world we find
Success begins with an
Individual's will
It is a state of mind
Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster person
But sooner or later the person
who wins
Is the person who thinks they can."
Anonymous* "Take time to be happy. Time is not a fast lane between cradle and grave. It is a place to park out of the sun."
Anonymous* "The early riser is healthy, cheerful and industrious."
Anonymous* "If you would keep young and happy, be good; live a high moral life; practice the principles of the brotherhood of man; send out good thoughts to all, and think evil of no man. This is in obedience to the great natural law; to live otherwise is to break this great Divine law. Other things being equal, it is the cleanest, purest minds that live long and are happy. The man who is growing and developing intellectually does not grow old like the man who has stopped advancing, but when ambition, aspirations and ideals halt, old age begins.
Anonymous* "Work is love made visible. Keep working with love."
Anonymous* "If you really do put a small value upon yourself, rest asured that the world will not raise your price."
Anonymous* "One cannot weep for the entire world. It is beyond human strength. One must choose."
Jean Anouilh* "The object of art is to give life a shape."
Jean Anouilh* "Things are beautiful if you love them."
Jean Anouilh* "I don't like nostalgia. I don't like to look back, only forward."
Michelangelo Antonioni* "Experience is a good teacher but she runs up big bills.
Minna Antrim* "Throw your heart out in front of you. And run ahead to catch it."
Arab Proverb* "He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything."
Arab Proverb* "If I had a lever I could move the world."
Archimedes
(Beginning of the Butterfly Effect and Chaos Theory?)* "The will to power . . . far from being a characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly their most dangerous one. Power corrupts indeed when the weak band together in order to ruin the strong, but not before."
Hannah Arendt* "All men by nature desire to know."
Aristotle* "Wealth obviously is not the good we seek, for the sole purpose it serves is to provide the means for getting something else, pleasure, virtue and honour would have better title to be considered the good for they are to be desired for their account."
Aristotle* "It is better for a city to be governed by a good man than by good laws."
Aristotle* "Nature does nothing without purpose or uselessly."
Aristotle* "Happiness itself is sufficient excuse. Beautiful things are right and true; so beautiful actions are those pleasing to the gods. Wise people have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it. The answer to the last appeal of what is right lies within a person's own breast. Trust thyself."
Aristotle* "The present is where we get lost--if we forget our past and have no vision of the future."
Ayi Kwei Armah (The Healers, 1978)* "Culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world."
Matthew Arnold* "The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything--or nothing."
Lady Astor* "Life is seldom as unendurable as, to judge by the facts, it logically ought to be."
Brooks Atkinson* "In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them."
Brooks Atkinson* "The greatest challenge for democracy is to persuade people not to eat the seed corn of tomorrow's harvest."
Clem Atlee* "Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past not leave it behind."
W.H. Auden* "There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police
We must love one another or die."
W.H. Auden* "Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity."
W.H. Auden* "We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know."
W.H. Auden* "Geniuses are the luckiest of motals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do."
W.H. Auden* "People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering."
St. Augustine* "To be free is . . . the interior certainty that every person is responsible for humanity, and not just before it."
Claude Averline* "It is by insisting on an impossible standard of perfection that sceptics make themselves secure." (*)
A.J. Ayer* "No moral system can rest solely on authority."
A.J. Ayer
A-B-C D-E-F G-H-I-J K-L-M N-O-P-Q R-S T-U-V W-Y-Z B
* "Character makes life immortal. It survives even death. Some say knowledge is power, but this is not true. Character is power."
Satya Sai Baba* "Money is like muck--not good unless it be spread."
Francis Bacon* "Make ye the world a bit better or more beautiful because ye have lived in it."
Francis Bacon* "There are three parts in truth: first, the inquiry, which is the wooing of it; secondly, the knowledge of it, which is the presence of it; and thirdly, the brief, which is the enjoyment of it."
Francis Bacon* "The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible."
Francis Bacon* "If a person will begin with certainties, they shall end in doubts; but if they be content to begin with doubts, they shall end in certainties." (*)
Francis Bacon* "The whole history of civilization is screwn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first and deadly afterwards."
Walter Bagehot* "What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork."
Pearl Bailey* "The future is like heaven--everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now."
James Baldwin* "The situation of our youth is not mysterious. Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. They must, they have no other models."
James Baldwin* "Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be."
James Baldwin* "It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiats can be trusted to speak the truth."
A.J. Balfour* "Providence has given human wisdom the choice between two fates: either hope and agitiation, or hopelessness and calm."
Yevgeny Baratynsky* "It's sad to grow old, but nice to ripen."
Brigitte Bardot* "What could be more beautiful than a dear old lady growing wise with age? Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it."
Brigitte Bardot* "Anxiety is simply part of the condition of being human. If we were not anxious, we would never create anything."
William Barrett* "The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one has to do."
J.M. Barrie* "Happiness sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open."
John Barrymore* When the historian, Charles A. Beard was asked about the lessons from history, he said there were four:
1. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.
2. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.
3. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.
4. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Charles A. Beard* "If you haven't been happy very young, you can still be happy later on, but it's much harder. You need more luck."
Simone de Beauvoir* "The significance of man is that he is that part of the universe that asks the question, 'What is the significance of man?' He alone can stand apart imaginatively and, regarding himself and the universe in their eternal aspects, pronounce a judgment: The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it."
Carl Becker* "The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next."
Henry Ward Beecher* "When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."
Alexander Graham Bell* "People are only as good as what they love." (*)
Saul Bellow* "I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction."
Saul Bellow* "We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong. We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom."
Stephen Vincent Benet* "I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means."
Alan Bennett* "Blessed are they who have reached the point of no return, and knows it, for they shall enjoy living."
W.C. Bennett* "A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the not-self that there is no self left to die."
Bernard Berenson* "We do not think in real time. But we live in it, because life is greater than intelligence."
Henri Bergson* "The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success."
Irving Berlin* "Man cannot live without seeking to describe and explain the universe."
Sir Isaiah Berlin* "We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physicial distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size."
Bernard of Chartres* "The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man."
William Henry Beveridge* "For that which is born death is certain, and for the dead birth is certain. Therefore grieve not over that which is unavoidable."
Bhagavad-Gita* "The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong."
Georges Bidault* "Experience. The wisdom that enables us to recognise in an underirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced."
Ambrose Bierce* "Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be."
Ambrose Bierce* "Life goes at such a terrific pace--a few years full of youth and grace and then you fall flat on your face before world history."
Wolf Biermann* "The weak are strong because they are reckless. The strong are weak because they have scruples."
Otto von Bismarck* "I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's
I will not reason and compare; My business is to create."
William Blake* "To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour."
William Blake* "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."
William Blake* "He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence."
William Blake* "He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses a joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sunrise."
William Blake* "Maybe the biggest problem in life is how to spend it."
Burt Blechman* "All that is finished, finished, finished;
The circle of our days is done.
And what illusion, and what power,
Recalls you, Past, when you have gone."
Alexander Blok* "The world is full of paradox. For example, [in Buddhism] though no notion of a creator is entertained, great stress is laid upon the need for faith and piety. By faith is meant not trust in a benevolent diety avid for love, praise and obedience, but conviction that beyond the seeming reality misreported by our senses which is inherently unsatisfactory, lies a mystery which, when intuitively unsatisfactory, lies a mystery which, when intuitively perceived, will give our lives undreamed-of meaning and endow the most insignificant object with holiness and beauty."
John Blofeld (Gateway to Wisdom, George Allen & Unwin, 1980, p181)* "We want to be known as a company that not only takes care of our employees, but is also generous to our community. It all helps the bottom line. Companies that don't understand that don't do as well as they could. Give something back and you'll wind up with more!"
Michael Bloomberg (Bloomberg by Bloomberg, Wiley, 1997, p249)* "With full-span lives having become the norm, people may need to learn how to be aged as they once had to learn how to be adult."
Ronald Blythe* "Any development of knowledge of the rules of nature which may help to give greater command of the powers of nature holds the hope of improving the living conditions of mankind; but also holds dangers which put our entire civilization to a serious test. The responsibilities, however, that these dangers are defeated in the right way, rests not only upon the scientist but must be shared by all circles of every nation."
Neils Bohr* "One's task is not to turn the world upside down, but to do what is necessary at the given place and with a due consideration of reality."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer* "Men who live in the present do not look forward to their fates."
Jorge Luis Borges* "What you really value is what you miss, not what you have."
Jorge Luis Borges* "Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure."
Kenneth Boulding* "The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants."
Omar Bradley* "There is no limit to the good person can do if they don't care who gets the credit."(*)
Judson B. Branch* "Authentic success is knowing how simply abundant your life is exactly as it is today. Authentic success is being so grateful for the many blessings bestowed on you. Authentic success is living each day with a heart overflowing."
Ban Breathnach* "The more we can squeeze out of nature by invention and discoveries and improved organization of labour, the more uncertain our existence seems to be. It's not we who lord it over things, it seems, but thinks which lord it over us."
Bertolt Brecht* "Those who have had no share in the good fortune of the mighty
Often have a share in their misfortune."
Bertolt Brecht* "Wisdom means keeping a sense of the fallibilityu of all our views and opinions, and of the uncertainty and instability of the things we most count on."
Gerald Brenan* "Change occurs when something new starts or something old stops, and it takes place at a particular point in time. But transition cannot be localized in time that way, since it is the gradual . . . process through which individuals and groups reorient themselves. Change often starts with a new beginning, but transition must start with an ending--with people letting go of old attitudes and behaviors."
William Bridges (Surviving Corporate Transitions)* "At some time in the life cycle of virtually every organization, its ability to succeed in spite of itself of itself runs out."
Richard H. Brien* "It's said that 'power corrupts,' but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptable. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seelks mastery, for which they are insatiable, implacable." (*)
David Brin* "We have to understand the world can only be grasped by an action, not by contemplation. . . . The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well and, having done it well, he loves to do it better. . . . The hand is the cutting edge of the mind."
Jacob Bronowski* "Human knowledge is personal and responsible, an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty."
Jacob Bronowski* "We are all afraid . . . for our confidence, for the future, for the world. That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet every person, every civilization, has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do. The personal commitment and the emotional commitment working together as one, has made the Ascent of Man."
Jacob Bronowski* "Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast on nature."
Jacob Bronowski* "Einstein was a man who could ask immensely simple questions."
Jacob Bronowski* "One good thing about being young is that you are not experienced anough to know you cannot possibly do the things you are doing."
Gene Brown* "The only true happiness comes from squandering yourself for a purpose."
John Mason Brown* "You don't own the future you don't own the past. Today is all you have."
Les Brown* "Light tomorrow with today!"
Elizabeth Barrett Browning* "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?"
Robert Browning* "We can pay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves."
John Buchan* "There is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed."
Frank Buchman* "Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again--this is the brave and happy life."
J.E. Buckrose* "The Buddha says worldly pleasure is the root of most sorrow."
Buddha (Time, 7 July 1997, p33)* "They do not dwell in remorse over the past, nor do they brood over the future: they abide in the present: therefore they are radiant."
Buddhist discourses (Samyutta Nikaya: 1.10)* "Nothing in all the world is left out or remains apart from the heart releasing loving-kindness."
Buddhist discourses (Samyutta Nikaya: 42.8)* "The wise do not rate themselves with the distinguished, nor with the lowest, nor with ordinary people; calm and unselfish, they are free from possessiveness, they hold on to nothing as theirs and reject nothing as not theirs."
Buddhist discourses (Sutta Nipata: 954)* "When there is nothing in the world that can trigger agitation, then one is free from the pain of longing."
Buddhist discourses (Sutta Nipata: 954)* "In any society, the artist has a responsibility. Their effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of nonconfromity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference isa very important." (*)
Luis Bunuel* "History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn."
Edmund Burke* "Society is indeed a contract . . . it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."
Edmund Burke* "A nation without the means of reform is without the means of survival."
Edmund Burke* "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
Edmund Burke* "To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagent hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind."
Edmund Burke* "The greatest joy in nature is the absence of man."
Edmund Burke* "Whatever each man can seperately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combination of skill and force, can do in his favour."
Edmund Burke* "Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together."
Edmund Burke* "At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can't be done. They hope it can't be done because it means seeing the garden in a whole new way. Then they see it can be done. Then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries before."
Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden)* "They are proud in humility; proud that they are not proud."
Robert Burton* "Good education is the essential foundation of a strong democracy."
Barbara Bush* "An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less."
Nicholas Murray Butler* "As the ancients
Say wisely, have a care o'th main chance,
And look before you ere you leap;
For as you sow, ye are like to reap."
Samuel Butler* "Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on."
Samuel Butler* "Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises."
Samuel Butler* "All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it--and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow."
Samuel Butler* "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is so."
Henry J. Byron* "But I have lived and have not lived in vain:
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire.
And my frame perish even in conquering pain;
But there is that within me which shall tire Torture and Time,
and breathe when I expire;
Something unearthly, which they deem not of.
Like the remember'd tone of a mute lyre.
Shall on their soften'd spirits sink,
and move In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love."
Lord Byron* "The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain."
Lord Byron* "I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture: I can see
Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be
A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,
And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain
Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain."
Lord Byron
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* "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."
James Branch Cabell* "I shall tell you a great secret my friend, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day."
Albert Camus* "Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time."
Albert Camus* "Don't walk before me,
I may not follow.
Don't walk behind me,
I may not lead.
Just walk beside me
and be my friend."
Albert Camus* "A person's work is nothing but the long journey to recover, through the detours of art, the two or three simple and great images which first gained access to his heart."
Albert Camus* Mankind has collected together all the wisdom of his ancestors, and can see what a fool man is."
Elias Canetti* "All reform except a moral one will prove unavailing."
Thomas Carlyle* "When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze."
Thomas Carlyle* "The end of man is an action and not a thought, though it were the noblest."
Thomas Carlyle* "Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind."
Thomas Carlyle* "Act as if you were already happy and that will trend to make you happy."
Dale Carnegie* "Change is certain, progress is not."
E.H. Carr* "It is the tradedy of the world that no one knows what they don't know; and the less a person knows, the more sure they are that they know everything."(*)
Joyce Cary* "The greatest comfort of any old age, and that which gives me the highest satisfaction, is the pleasing remembrance of the many benefits and friendly offices I have done to others."
Cato* "The first step to knowledge is to know that we are ignorant."
Lord David Cecil* "There are only two families in the world, the Haves and the Have Nots."
Miguel de Cervantes* "One should never place confidence in the future--it doesn't deserve it."
Paul Chamson* "There is time for work. And a time for love. That leaves no other time.
Coco Chanel* "Those who receive a good turn should never forget it; those who do one should never remember it."
Pierre Charron* "Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money and power and influence."
Henry Chester* "Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least."
Lord Chesterfield* "Be wiser than other people, if you can, but do not tell them so."
Lord Chesterfield* "The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in the closet."
Lord Chesterfield* "Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not merely pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one."
Lord Chesterfield* "The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable but not quite. Life is not an illigicality, yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait."
G.K. Chesterton* "The really great person is the person who makes every person feel great." (*)
G.K. Chesterton* "The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's."
G.K. Chesterton* "You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."
G.K. Chesterton* "Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit."
G.K. Chesterton* "We live in the present, we dream of the future, but we learn eternal truths from the past."
Madame Chiang Kai-shek* "The cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, and the crimes of humanity, all lie in the one word 'love.' It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life."
Lydia Maria Child, 1802-1880* "Make happy those who are near, and those who are far away will come."
Chinese proverb* "You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair."
Chinese proverb* "There is great man who makes every man feel small. But the really great man is the man who makes every man feel great."
Chinese proverb* "A man of great wisdom often appears slow-witted."
Chinese proverb* "Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime."
Chinese proverb* "Trust only those you don't need to trust."
Chinese proverb* "If you are planning for one year, grow rice. If you are planning for 20 years, grow trees. If you are planning for centuries, grow men."
Chinese proverb* "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."
Chinese proverb* "If you don't want anyone to know it, don't do it."
Chinese proverb* "It is not what life does to you that is important but what you do with what life does to you."
Chinese proverb* "I learned . . . that one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back--that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a One Way Street."
Agatha Christie* "Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed."
Winston Churchill* "Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge."
Winston Churchill* "The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong."
Winston Churchill* "In war, as in life, it is often necessary, when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might."
Winston Churchill* "It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time."
Winston Churchill* "It has been said that Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
Winston Churchill* When asked what are the desirable qualifications for any young person who wishes to become a politican, Churchill replied: "It is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen."
Winston Churchill* "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."
Winston Churchill* "I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know."
Cicero ("The little I know, I owe to my ignorance." Sacha Guitry)* "Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed." ("Life is nothing without friendship.")
Cicero* "We can destroy ourselves by Cynicism and disillusion just as effectively as by bombs."
Kenneth Clark* "It is man's task, his greatest task, not to learn to love, but to learn to create the conditions in which love alights upon us and remains with us."
Irene Clatremont de Castillejo (Knowing Women: A Feminine Psychology)* "The only living society is that which is animated by inequality and injustice."
Paul Claudel* "The most revolutionary statement in history is 'Love thine enemy.'"
Eldridge Cleaver* "Pleasure is a shadow,
wealth is vanity,
and power a pageant;
but knowledge
is ecstatic in enjoyment,
perennial in frame,
unlimited in space and
indefinite in duration."
De Witt Clinton* "The world is too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love."
Rev. William Sloane Coffin* "The point to remember is that what the government gives it must first take away."
John S. Coleman* "If people could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!" (*)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge* "The great successful people of the world . . . think ahead and create their mental picture, and then go to work materializing that picture in all its details, filling in here, adding a little there, altering this a bit and that a bit but steadily building--steadily building."
Robert Collier* "Perfect freedom is reserved for the person who lives by their own work and in that work does what they want to do." (*)
R.G. Collingwood* "There is this difference between happiness and wisdom, that those that think of themselves as the happiest person, really is so; but they that think themselves the wisest, are generally the greatest fool." (*)
Charles Caleb Colton* "There is a paradox in pride: it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so."
Charles Caleb Colton* "Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness."
Confucius* "Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing, and the overtaking and possessing of a wish, discovers the folly of the chase."
William Congreve* "Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
I've read that things inanimate have moved,
And as with living souls have been inform'd
By magic numbers and persuasive sound."
William Congreve* "Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past."
Cyril Connolly* "All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upwards on the miseries or credulities of mankind."
Joseph Conrad* "I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more--the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the decitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort--to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every uyear grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires--and expires, too soon, too soon--before life itself."
Joseph Conrad* "Faith moves mountains, but you have to keep pushing while you are praying."
Mason Cooley* "'Why not' is a slogan for an interesting life."
Mason Cooley* "No person was ever honoured for what they received. Honour has been the reward for what they gave." (*)
Calvin Coolidge* "The artist is not a special kind of person, but every one is a special kind of artist." (*)
Ananda Coomaraswamy* "It should be our purpose in life to see that each of us makes such a contribution as will enable us to stay that we, individually and collectively, are a part of the answer to the world problem and not part of the problem itself."
Andrew Cordier* "It's taken me all my life to understand that it is not necessary to understand everything."
Rene Coty* "History is a vast early warning system."
Norman Cousins* "The most costly disease is not cancer or coronaries. The most costly disease is boredom--costly for both individuals and society."
Norman Cousins* "Enjoy the present hour,
Be thankful for the past,
And neither fear nor wish
Th' approaches of the last."
Abraham Cowley* "Life is an incurable disease."
Abraham Cowley* "They tell you that you'll lose your mind when you grow older. What they don't tell you is that you won't miss it very much."
Malcolm Cowley* "Existence is a strange bargin. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose."
William Cowper* "Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,
Have oft times no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men:
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
Wisdom is humble that he know no more."
William Cowper* "Existence is a strange bargin. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose."
William Cowper* Jill Craigie's great passion is gardening. "You have to look to the future in gardening," she says finally. "It takes the curse out of old age."
Jill Craigie ("Tee for Two," Sarah Boseley, The Guardian 17 July 1997)* "Because you care, each task will be much lighter,
Each burden so much easier to bear;
And each new morning's outlook better, brighter,
And each new day more blest, because you care.
Because you care, each joy will seem completer,
Each treasure doubly dear and true and rare;
And in my heart I'll always find it sweeter
To want the higher things, because you care."
Frank Crane* "I still lived in the future--a habit which is the death of happiness."
Quentin Crisp* "The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us."
Quentin Crisp* "None climbs so high as he who knows not whether he is going."
Oliver Cromwell* "A Man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd."
James Crook* "What is life? It is the flesh of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."
Chief Crowfoot* "One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done."
Marie Curie
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