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? |