T-rev's Favorite Quotes

EDUCATION
"The covers of this book are too far apart." -Ambrose Bierce
"Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions." -Oliver Wendell Holmes
"It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it." -J. Bronowski
"When professors want your opinion, they'll give it to you."
"We learn from history that we do not learn anything from history."
"Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading." -G.M. Trevelyan
 
WISDOM
"These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future." -Vernon Cooper
In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things love.
"We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are." -Talmudic Saying
"We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect." -Henry David Thoreau
"When a man is wrapped up in himself he makes a pretty small package." -John Ruskin
"Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings." -Alice Miller
"Always hold your head up, but be careful to keep your nose at a friendly level." -Max L. Forman
"Modern man thinks he loses something--time--when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains except kill it." -Erich Fromm
"The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants." -Gen. Omar Bradley
"Conscience is the inner voice warning us that someone may be looking." -H.L. Mencken
"In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place." -Mohandas K. Gandhi
"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that." -G. H. Hardy
 
WORDS
"Wise sayings often fall on barren ground; but a kind word is never thrown away." -Arthur Helps (1813-1875)
"The cruelest lies are often told in silence." -Robert Louis Stevenson
"Silent gratitude isn't very much use to anyone." -Gertrude B. Stein
What you are speaks so loud, I cannot hear what you are saying.
 
INDIVIDUALITY
Continue to be yourself because in the end that's what people will remember about you.
"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be." -Abraham Maslow
"I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live." -Francoise Sagan
"Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except the best." -Henry Van Dyke
"I believe I have no prejudices whatsoever. All I need to know is that a man is a member of the human race. That's bad enough for me." -Mark Twain
Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.
 
BEAUTY
"In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty." -Christopher Morley
Those who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.
"Memory calls us back, Mystery draws us forward." -Jim Hamilton
God respects us when we work and loves us when we sing.
 
FAITH
"Keep your faith in all beautiful things; in the sun when it is hidden, in the Spring when it is gone." -Roy R. Gilson
"The refusal to choose is a form of choice; disbelief is a form of belief." -Frank Barron
"The more I study physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics." -Albert Einstein
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." -C.S.Lewis
 
LOVE
"To love a person means to see him as God intended him to be." -Dostoyevsky
"If I love you, what business is it of yours?" -Goethe
Friends: People who know you well, but like you anyway.
 
FAILURE
"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The only time you don't fail is the last time you try anything--and it works." -William Strong
Failure is often that early morning hour of darkness that precedes the dawning of the day of success.
 
PAIN
"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." -C.S. Lewis
"Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body." -Seneca
"Our sincerest laughter \ With some pain is fraught; \ Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought." -Shelley
"There never was night that had no morn." -Dinah Mulock Craik
"Eyes are vocal, tears have tongues, \ And there are words not made with lungs." -Crashaw
 
LISTENING
Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf." -American Indian Proverb
If people listened to themselves more often, they would talk less.
"Among my most prized possessions are the words that I have never spoken." -Orson Rega Card
"Do you always want to be right, or do you want to be happy?" -Jackson Browne [P.S. I Love You]
 
HAPPINESS
"Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be." -Abraham Lincoln (1809-65)
"I would rather be able to appreciate things I cannot have than to have things I am not able to appreciate." -Elbert Hubbard
"Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian." -Dennis Wholey
It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it.
"It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust." -Samuel Johnson
 
THOUGHT
"The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature." -Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD)
"The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language." -J. Michael Straczynski
"Thought is the labour of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure." -Victor Hugo
"Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active." -Leonardo da Vinci
"There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line." -Oscar Levant
"To use the mind as it's all too commonly used, on the kinds of things that it's usually used on, is about as inefficient and inappropriate as using a magic sword to open up a can of beans." -Benjamin Hoff
"It isn't that they can't see the solution. It's that they can't see the problem." -G.K. Chesterton
"A great many people mistake opinions for thoughts." -Herbert V. Prochnow
"Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought." -Henri Bergson
 
ACTION
"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour." -Robert L. Stevenson
"Would you live with ease, do what you ought, and not what you please." -Benjamin Franklin
"What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence." -Samuel Johnson
The trouble with doing nothing is that you never know when you are finished.
"It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do." -Moliere
"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however." -Richard Bach
"The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone." -Stella, Lady Reading
"The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it." -John Ruskin
 
CHANGE
"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." -Nelson Mandela [A Long Walk to Freedom]
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." -Leo Tolstoy
"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof." -Galbraith's Law
"Better is the enemy of good." Voltaire
"Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress." -Thomas Edison
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Don't be afraid to go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is." -Jackson Browne [P.S. I Love You]
 
INITIATIVE
"One hundred percent of the shots you don't take don't go in." -Wayne Gretzky
"If you want anything done well, do it yourself. This is why most people laugh at their own jokes." -Bob Edwards
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult." -Seneca
"The impossible is often the untried." -Jim Goodwin
 
TRUTH
"I never said it was possible. I only said it was true." -Charles Richet, Nobel Laureate in Physiology
"Is this true or only clever?" -Augustine Birrell
"The worst of all deceptions is self-deception." -Plato
"I haven't been wrong since 1961, when I thought I made a mistake." -Bob Hudson
 
CHARITY
"Knowing all truth is less than doing a little bit of good." -Albert Schweitzer
"Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness." -Seneca
"This is the final test of the gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him." -William Lyon Phelps
"The deeds you do today may be the only sermon some people will hear today." -St. Francis of Assisi
"We can pay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves." -John Buchan (1875-1940) Scottish author
"From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life." -Arthur Ashe
 
LIFE
"May you live all the days of your life." -Jonathan Swift
"Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life." -Germaine Greer
Live your life as an exclamation, not an explanation.
It's not a matter of where you stand but in what direction you're headed.
Don't count the days, make the days count.
"Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." -Mark Twain
"Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped." -last words of Groucho Marx
 
HUMOR
A good pun is its own reword.
"These are the tries that time men's soles." -Heard at a track meet
The trouble with political jokes is that they get elected.
"No wonder nobody comes here--it's too crowded." -Yogi Berra
Some people would not recognize subtlety if it hit them on the head.
"critic, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him." -Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) [The Devil's Dictionary]
Reputation: what others are not thinking about you.
"Tact is the art of convincing people that they know more than you do." -Raymond Mortimer
"I had a couple requests, but I'm gonna play anyway." -Billy Sprague, songwriter
Someday you will get your big chance--or have you already had it?