A
"Never
let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right." Isaac
Asimov
"Christ
did not enchant men; He demanded that they believe in Him: except on one
occasion, the Transfiguration. For a brief while, Peter, James, and John were
permitted to see Him in His glory. For that brief while they had no need of
faith. The vision vanished, and the memory of it did not prevent them from all
forsaking Him when He was arrested, or Peter from denying that he had ever known
Him." W. H. Auden, A Certain World [1971]
"Evil
is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
" W.H. Auden
B
"You
have given your life to become the person you are today. Was it worth it? "
Richard Bach
“We
find the most terrible form of atheism, not in the militant and passionate
struggle against the idea of God himself, but in the practical atheism of
everyday living, in indifference and torpor. We often encounter these forms of
atheism among those who are formally Christians.”
Nicolai Berdyaev
"... it is certain from the Holy Writ... that the world will end with the passing away of this generation... with the coming of every dawn we should think that it may not be the sun, but the world beginning to burn." Marion Zimmer Bradley - The Forest House (pg. 355)
"Don't
say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per
day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa,
Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein." H. Jackson
Brown
"The
masses bother me not because they are basically stupid, but because they push
their stupidity into my life." Charles Bukowski
"If
we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it
comes from the hand of the same master. " Michelangelo Buonarroti,
1474 - 1564
"It
is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's
doubts. " G. B. Burgin
"An
apology for the Devil: It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of
the case. God has written all the books.” Samuel Butler "Higgledy-Piggledy"
C
"The
soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears." John Vance Cheney
"Men
occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and
hurry off as if nothing had happened." Winston Churchill
"
"The
male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be
trained to do most things." Jilly Cooper
D
"i am an agnostic; i do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of." clarence darrow
"Dream
as if you'll live forever and live as if you'll die tomorrow." James
Dean
"Memorize
quotes. They're useful in ending and winning arguments. Then again, so are semi-
automatic
weapons. " Tony Detharidge
"Some
people say that cats are sneaky, evil, and cruel. True, and they have many other
fine qualities as well. " Missy Dizick
E
"The
most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of
all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger,
who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as
dead: his eyes are closed.." Albert
Einstein
"I
want to know God's thoughts. The rest are details." Albert Einstein
F
"The
test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in
the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should,
for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to
make them otherwise. " F. Scott Fitzgerald
"a
person is never happy except at the price of some ignorace" Anatole
"I
believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. I believe that dreams are
more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That
laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than
death." Robert Fulghum
"I
want to be 5 yrs. old again. I want to laugh a lot & cry a lot. I want to be
picked up & rocked to sleep in someone's arms, & carried up to bed just
one more time. I know what I really want for Christmas. I want my childhood
back." Robert Fulghum
G
“Anarchism
is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which
maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises
are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination.
Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature,
but in man.” Emma Goldman
“It
is safe to say that no other superstition is so detrimental to growth, so
enervating and paralyzing to the minds and hearts of the people, as the
superstition of Morality.” Emma
Goldman
“Love,
the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of
ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the
most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be
synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?”
Emma Goldman
"It
gets annoying when all I hear some people saying is 'What Would Jesus Do?' and
I'm like: what, for a Klondike bar?" Arjuna Greist
"Love
is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with
a miniature machine gun." Matt Groening, Life in Hell
H
"For
a woman there is nothing more erotic than being understood." Molly
Haskell
"In
a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than
people who cannot or will not read.... It is not true that we have only one life
to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of
lives as we wish." S.I. Hayakawa
"From
your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the
other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings."
Helen Hayes
"Women
and cats will do as they please. Men and dogs had better get used to it. "
Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
J
"When
young lips have drunk deep of the bitter waters of hate, suspicion, and despair,
all the love in the world will not wholly take away that knowledge."
Dorothy Jongward
K
"Fiction
is the truth inside the lie. " Stephen King
L
"don't
confuse the end of your world with the beginning of mine."
john leguizamo
"An
individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special
reasons -- marriage, or meat, or beer, or cinema; but the moment he starts
saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other
people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning." C S
Lewis, Mere Christianity
M
"The
jungle is dark, but full of diamonds." Arthur Miller,
Death of a Salesman
"Better
to reign in hell than serve in heaven." John Milton " Paradise
Lost"
"The
mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of
Heav'n. " John Milton
N
"Knowing
what goes on behind my placid exterior, I have a strong suspicion of what goes
on behind yours." Richard Needham
"The
earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called
man." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"One
must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star."
Nietzsche
"If
you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
Neitzsche
O
"Belief
is for those that do not know; faith is for those that refuse to know"
Optik
"No
one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much
you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates
killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers." P.J. O'Rourke
"If
God had a face…would you want to see, if seeing meant that you would have to
believe..?" Joan Osborne, "What if God Was One of Us"
P
"Those
who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or
have gone stark raving mad." Norm Papernick
"All
that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream."
edgar allan poe
"Those
who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only
by night" Edgar Allen Poe
"The
trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on
coming along and trying to put things in it." Terry Pratchett,
Diggers
"Build
a man a fire and you keep him warm for a day. Set a man on fire and you keep him
warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchett, Jingo
"Five
exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind. " Terry Pratchett,
Reaper Man
"His
philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and
the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, `You
can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you
can do about it, so let's have a drink.' " Terry Pratchett
“The
illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten-thousand truths.” Aleksandr
Pushkin
R
"So
we reach into the raging chaos, and we pluck some small glittering thing, and we
cling to it, and we tell ourselves it has meaning, and that the world is good,
and we are not evil, and we will all go home in the end." Anne Rice
"All
big things in this world are done by people who are naive and have an idea that
is obviously impossible." Dr. Frank Richards
"Kill
one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill all
and you are a GOD" Jean Rostand
S
"I
cannot open the windows from the outside without breaking them; but from the
inside, you can lift them with ease." B. Sbragia
"hello,
i'm god and i do things half-ass, like making humans. " beth steenson
"The
idea of God is slightly more plausible than the alternative proposition that,
given enough time, some green slime could write Shakespeare's sonnets."
Tom Stoppard
"A
great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You
should live several lives while reading it." William Styron
"We
have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one
another. " Jonathan Swift
T
"Perhaps
our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see Life
with a clearer view again." Alex Tan
"When
we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands
explained." Mark Twain
"Of
all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the
lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve
man, but it would deteriorate the cat. " Mark Twain
V
"One
may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever comes to sit by it.
Passersby see only a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney and continue on their
way." Vincent Van Gogh
"No
culture has a monopoly on beauty or value... Just as no religion has a monopoly
on truth." Voltaire
W
"Of
all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: “It might have been!”
" John Greenleaf Whittier
"If
all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state
of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish,
the environment would collapse into chaos." Edward O. Wilson
Z
"I
like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words,
beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that
there is something to hold back the shadows. " Roger Zelazny
OTHER
"depression
is merely anger without enthusiasm" unknown
"Wouldn't
it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to
us come because we actually deserve them? So now I take great comfort in the
general hostility and unfairness of the universe." Marcus Cole,
Babylon 5
"The
quiet ones change the universe. The loud ones just take the credit."
Londo Mollari, Babylon 5
"Do
you understand? No,
of course not. You have
that vacant look in your eyes that says, 'Put my head to your ear, and you shall
hear the ocean.'" Londo Mollari, Babylon 5
"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 and
that enables you to laugh at life's realities." Dr. Seuss
"There
comes a time when you look into the mirror and realize that what you see is all
that you will ever be. Then you accept it, or you kill yourself. Or, you stop
looking into mirrors." Londo Mollari, Babylon 5
"It's
not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept." Calvin
(& Hobbes)
"Choose
your future. Choose life. But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose
not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no
reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin? People think it's all about
misery and desperation and death and all that shit, which is not to be ignored,
but what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise, we wouldn't do it. After
all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid. "
Renton , Trainspotting
"The
secret to getting my wife to be less inhibited had more to do with me than her.
It wasn't until I started listening to what she wanted from me outside the
bedroom that changes happened inside the bedroom. I needed to show that I loved
her by talking to her and treating her as my equal in all aspects of life. Once
she became secure and felt deeply loved by me, all her inhibitions disappeared.
Damn, I wish I had figured that out sooner. " Danny G, 58,
accountant, husband for 24 years
Comes
The Dawn
After
a while you learn
the
subtle difference between
holding
a hand and chaining a soul
and
you learn that love doesn't mean possession
and
company doesn't mean security.
And
you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and
presents aren't promises,
and
you begin to accept your defeats
with
your head up and your eyes open
with
the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child.
And
you learn to build your roads today,
because
tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans
and
futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After
awhile you learn that even sunshine burns
if
you get too much, so you plant your own garden
and
decorate your own soul
instead
of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And
you learn that you really can endure
that
you really are strong
and
you really do have worth
and
you learn
and
you learn...
with
every good-bye you learn
Aplolgia
Pro Vita Sua
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The
poet in his lone yet genial hour
Gives to his eyes a magnifying power :
Or rather he emancipates his eyes
From the black shapeless accidents of size--
In unctuous cones of kindling coal,
Or smoke upwreathing from the pipe's trim bole,
His gifted ken can see
Phantoms of sublimity.