My Collection of Quotations and Miscellaneous Wisdom(?)
You are born. And oh, how you wail.
Your first breath is a scream.
Not timid, or low, but selfish and shattering.
With all the force of waiting 9 months under water.
The rest of your life.
Should be like that:
An announcement.
Nike
"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and
rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it
is found written in your religious books. Do not believe
in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and
elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been
handed down for many generations. But after observation and
analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and
is conductive to the good and benefit of one and all, then
accept it and live up to it."
-Buddha
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out
how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could
have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who
is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short
again and again; who knows great enthusiasms, the great
devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; what the best
knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at
the worst, if he at least fails while DARING GREATLY so
that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know
neither victory or defeat."
-Theodore Roosevelt
"If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep
streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played
music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets
so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause
to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job
well."
-Martin Luther King Jr.
"I will greet this day with love in my heart. For this is the
greatest secret of success in all ventures. Muscles can split a
shield and even destroy life it self, but only the unseen
power of love can open the hearts of man. And until I
master this act I will remain no more than a peddler in the
marketplace. I will make love my greatest weapon and none on who
I can defend upon its force...my love will melt all
hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest day."
-O.G. Mandino
"Eight hundred life spans can bridge more than 50,000 years. But
of those 800 people, 650 spend their lives in caves or
worse; only the last 70 had any truly effective means of
communicating with one another, only the last 6 ever saw a
printed word or had any real means of measuring heat and
cold, only the last 4 could measure time with any precision; only
the last 2 used an electric motor; and the vast majority
of the items that make up our material world were
developed within the life-span of the eight-hundreth person."
-R.L. Lescher and G.J. Howick
"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned the hard way, that
some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a
clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not
knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best
of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious abmiguity."
-Gilda Radner
"Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become your character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny."
-Frank Outlaw
"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another is more important than your own."
-Robert A. Heinlein
"Speak not of what you have read, but about what you have understood."
-Azerbaijani Proverb
"Tell me and I may remember.
Show me and I may learn.
Involve me and I will understand."
-Chinese Proverb
The Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
1. You cannot win.
2. You cannot break even.
3. You cannot get out of the game.
-Anon
"There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there
is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know so why fret about it?"
-Lazarus Long
"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
"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I
didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."
-Martin Niemoeller
"The starting point of achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just
as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat."
-Napoleon Hill
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Only persistance and determination will solve the problems of the human race."
-Calvin Coolidge
"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
-William Shakespeare
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
-Mark Twain
"What lies behinds us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
-Oliver Wendall Homes
"I do not agree with a word you say. But to my death I will defend your right to say it."
-Attributed to Voltaire
"I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy. But that could change."
-Dan Quale
"There is no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes."
-Dr. Who
"I touch the future, I teach."
-Christa McCaulif
"the only problem with thinking of life as a good book is that just when it starts getting really good, it ends."
-Jeffrey S. Brown
"What is mind? It doesn't matter. What is matter? Never mind."
-Anon.
"Information isn't knowledge until you can use it."
-Anon.
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains
however improbable, must be the truth."
-Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle
"Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it."
-Laurence Lee
"Your current safe boundaries were once unknown frontiers."
-Anon.
"I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer gods than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
- Stephen F. Roberts
"Speed gets you nowhere if you are headed in the wrong direction."
-American Proverb
Look to this day!
For it is life,
The very life of life.
In its brief course lie
All the verities and realities
Of your existence.
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendor of beauty.
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision.
But, today well lived
Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day!
-Sanskrit Proverb
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