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A

Failure is a part of success.  There is no such thing as a bed of roses all your life.  But failure will never stand in the way of success if you learn from it. –Hank Aaron, American Hall of Fame baseball player, 1934-

If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever.  Is this good news? –Douglas Noel Adams, British humorous writer, 1952-2001

Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes.  Art is knowing which ones to keep. –Scott Adams, American cartoonist and write

The only thing to know is how to use your neuroses. –Arthur Adamov, Russian-born French dramatist and translator, 1908-1970

Let us dare to read, speak, think, and write. -John Adams, American Revolutionary leader, 1st vice-president (1789-1797), and 2nd president (1797-1801), 1735-1826

Better to die a thousand deaths than wound my honor. –Joseph Addison, English essayist and statesman, 1672-1719

The post of honor is a private station. –Addison

We are growing serious, and let me tell you, that’s the next step to being dull. –Addison

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. –Mortimer Jerome Adler, American philosopher and educator, 1902-

Don’t use your conscious past.  Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. –Stella Adler

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder. – Æschylus, Greek dramatist, 525-456 BC

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. – Æschylus

You do not lose the substance by grasping at the shadows. –Aesop, Greek fabelist, fl. 6th century BC

Even God cannot change the past. –Agathon, Athenian tragedian, c. 450 c. 400 BC

I cannot afford to waste time making money. –Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, Swiss-born American naturalist, 1807-1873

Arguments with furniture are rarely productive. –Kehlog Ahbran

Nothing is impossible to a valiant heart. –Jean d’Albert of Navare, Spanish monarch, 16th century

A man can do all things if he but wills them. –Leon Battista Alberti, Italian architect and writer, 1404-1472

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. –Herm Albright

Often the test of courage is not to die but to live. –Vittorio Alfieri, Italian playwright, 1749-1803

When asked how he conquered the world, Alexander the Great responded, “By not delaying”. Macedonian ruler and military leader, 336-323 BC

Death should not be seen as the end but as a very effective way to cut down expenses. –Woody Allen, American director, 1935-

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it. –Woody Allen

Good people sleep better, but the bad ones seem to enjoy the waking hours more. –Woody Allen

If this film makes one person feel miserable, I’ll feel I’ve done my job. –Woody Allen

Is sex dirty?  Only if you do it right.  –Woody All 

It’s impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still be able to carry a tune.  –Woody Allen

If you can’t annoy somebody with what you write, I think there’s little point in writing. –Kingsley Amis, British novelist, 1922-1995

What price Glory? –Maxwell Anderson, American playwright, 1888-1959

The trick is to realize that after giving your best, there’s nothing left to give. –George Lee “Sparky” Anderson, American baseball player and manager, 1934-

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded. –Maya Angelou, American author and poet, 1928-

You win only if you aren’t afraid to lose. –Rocky Aoki

Not everything that is more difficult is more meretious. –Thomas Aquinas, Italian theologian, 1225-1274

Choose your friends carefully.   Your enemies will choose you. –Yasar Arafat, Palestinian leader and Nobel Laureate, 1929-

Eureka! –Archimedes, Greek mathematician, engineer, and physicist, 287?-212 BC

Failure to hit the bull’s eye is never the fault of the target.  To improve the aim-improve yourself. –Gilbert Arland

The world isn’t interested in the storms you encountered, but whether or not you brought in the ship. –Raul Armesto

Distrust yourself, and sleep before you fight. –Dr. John Armstrong, American soldier, diplomat, and politician, 1758-1843

...It was from an old friend who thought he was dying. Anyway, he said, "Life and death issues don't come along that often, thank God, so don't treat everything like it's life or death. Go easier. –Thomas Arnold, British educator and historian, 1795-1842

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness. –Aristotle, Greek philosopher, 384-322 BC

You win some, you lose some, and some get rained out, but you gotta suit up for them all. –J. Askenberg

Nothing seems so tragic to one who is old as the death of one who is young, and this proves that life is a good thing. –Zoë Atkins, American playwright, 1886-1958

Lost time is never found again. –Aughey

Love, and do what you like. –Augustine, Church Doctor, 354-430

Live as on a mountain! –Marcus Aurelius Antonius Augustus, Roman emperor (161-180) and philosopher, 121-180

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. –Jane Austen, English novelist, 1775-1817

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it. –Jane Austen

 

B

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. –Richard David Bach, American writer, 1936-

You only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. –Richard David Bach

All rising to a great place is by a winding stair. –Francis Bacon, English philosopher and statesman, 1561-1626

A wise man makes more opportunities than he finds. –Bacon

(Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.)
Knowledge itself is power. –Bacon

Silence is the virtue of fools. –Bacon

(Dolendi modus, timendi non item.)
To suffering there is a limit, to fearing, none. –Bacon

It’s important to let people know what you stand for.  It’s also equally important that they know what you won’t stand for. –B. Bader

You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die.  Or when.  You can only choose how you’re going to live-Now. –Joan Baez, American folk singer, 1941-

The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do. –Walter Bagehot, British economist, social scientist, and journalist, 1826-1877

I’d rather regret the things I have done than the things I have not. –Lucille Ball, American comic actress, 1911-1989

This--this was what made life: a moment of quiet, the water falling in the fountain, the girl's voice...a moment of captured beauty. He who is truly wise will never permit such moments to escape. –Roger Gilbert Bannister, British runner, first man to break the four-minute mile, 1954-

When walking through the “valley of shadows”, remember that a shadow is cast by a light. –H.K. Barclay

I’m youth.  I’m joy.  I’m the little bird that has broken out of the egg. –James Matthew Barie, British writer, 1860-1937

To die will be an awfully big adventure. –James M. Barie

You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by.  Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by. –James M. Barie

If it was an overnight success, it one long, hard, sleepless night. –Dicky Barrett

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself. –Ethel Barrymore, American actress, 1879-1959

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God. –Karl Barth, Swiss Protestant theologian, 1886-1968

Do what you want to do, and go where you’re going to…Think for yourself because I won’t be there with you.  –The Beatles

Inspiration comes of working every day. –Charles Pierre Baeudelaire, French writer, translator, and critic, 1821-1867

I quickly laugh at everything for fear of having to cry. –Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, French writer, 1732-1799

There is an hour is each man’s life appointed
To make his happiness, if then he were to seize it. –Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625), both English playwrights

Go on failing.  Go on.  Only next time, try to fail better.  –Samuel Beckett, Irish writer and absurdist playwright, 1906-1989

Try everything once except incest and folk dancing. –Thomas Beecham, British conductor, 1879-1961

Good humor makes all things tolerable. –Henry Ward Beecher, American clergyman and writer, 1813-1887

Nobody ever died of laughter. –Henry Maximilian Beerbohm, British author, 1872-1956

Variety is the soul of pleasures. –Aphra Behn, English playwright, 1640-1689

Re: Publicity: Never let them see you in public unless they pay for it. -David Belasco, American playwright and producer, 1853-1931

Everybody should believe in something; I believe I’ll have another drink. –Robert Charles Benchley, American humorist, 1889-1945

Well, my deliberate opinion is-it’s a jolly strange world. –Enoch Arnold Bennett, British novelist and playwright, 1867-1931

There are two ways of being creative. One can sing and dance. Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers flourish. –Warren G. Bennis

Art is I; science is we. –Bernard

We all know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road.  They get run down. –Aneurin Bevan, British Labor politician, 1897-1960

Let us make us a name. –Gen. 11: 4

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. –Psalms 30: 5

A time to weep, and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance. –Ecclesiastes 3: 4

Eat they bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart. –Ecclesiastes 9:10

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come. –Solomon: 2: 12

Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die. –Isaiah 22: 13

Put out in deep water. –Luke 5: 4

Neglect not the gift that is in thee. –I Timothy 4:14

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course; I have kept the faith. –II Timothy 4: 7

The Lord is my helper and I will not fear what man shall do to me. –Hebrews 13: 6

Resist the devil and he will flee from you. -James 4: 7

Mad: adj., Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence. –Ambrose Gwinett Bierce, American author and humorist, 1842-1914

Always be ready to speak you mind, and a base man will avoid you. –William Blake, English poet and painter, 1757-1827

Exuberance is beauty. –Blake

No bird soars too high, if he soars on his own wings. –Blake

O!  How I dreamt of things impossible! –Blake

Do everything.  One thing may turn out right. –Humphrey DeForest Bogart, American actor, 1899-1957

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever. –Napoleon Bonaparte, French general and dictator, 1769-1821

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself. –Napoleon Bonaparte

It is cowardice to commit suicide. –Napoleon Bonaparte, 1817

It requires more courage to suffer than to die. –Napoleon Bonapar 

The bullet that will kill me is not yet cast. –Napoleon Bonaparte

The reason that I beat the Austrians is that they did not know the value of five minutes. –Napoleon Bonaparte

Silence gives consent. –Boniface VIII, Italian pope (1294-1303), c. 1235-1303

Perhaps no one can really be a good appreciating pagan who has not once been a bad Puritan. –Bourne

(To daughter Jackie) Be mysterious. –John Bouvier

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself. –Bovee

When all else is lost, the future still remains. –Bovee

All great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulty. –William Bradford, English-born American colonial printer, 1663-1752

Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire within ourselves. –Nathaniel Brande

...there is a correlation between the creative and the screwball. –Kingman Brewster, Jr.

Look, I really don’t want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you’re alive you’ve got to flap your arms and legs, you’ve got to jump around a lot, you’ve got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death.  And therefore, as I see it, if you’re quiet you’re not living…you’ve got to be noisy or at least your thoughts should be noisy and colorful and lively. –Mel Brooks, American filmmaker and producer

Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb.  That’s where the fruit is. –H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

No victory is worth the sacrifice of ideals. –H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance. –Sam Brown

Better encounter a danger than live in continual fear. –William H. Browne, English poet, 1591?-1645?

Best be yourself, imperial, plain, and true! –Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet, 1806-1861

Since when was genius found respectable? –Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Whoso loves
Believes the impossible. –Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Grow old along with me!  The best is yet to be.  The last of life, for which the first was made. –Robert Browning, British poet, 1812-1889

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all. –Jean de La Bruyère, French writer and moralist, 1645-1696

Time was made for slaves. –John B. Buckstone

Refuse to be ill.  Never tell people you are ill; never own to it yourself.  Illness is one of those things which man should resist from the outset. –Edward Robert Bulwar-Lytton, British politician and diplomat, 1831-1891

The real slavery in Egypt was this: the Israelites learned to endure it. –Simcha Bunim

All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing. –Edmund Burke, Irish philosopher and statesman, 1729-1797

Neutrality, as a lasting principle, is evidence of weakness. –Edmund Burke

The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear. –Edmund Burke

Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men’s blood. –Daniel Hudson Burnham, American architect and city planner, 1846-1912

…the prime mark of autonomous power, of independence, is the ability to say No. –James Burnham, British anti-communist, 1905-1987

Don’t stay in bed…unless you can make money in bed. –George Burns, American comedian, 1896-1996

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die. –Amelia Josephine Burr

How beautifully leaves grow old.  How light and full of color are their last days. –John Burroughs, American naturalist and writer, 1837-1921

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. –Samuel Butler, British author, 1835-1902

The gods are those who either have money or do not want it. –Samuel Butler

The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it. –Samuel Butler

In life, as in chess, forethought wins. –Charles Buxton

Do not run a campaign that would embarrass your mother. Sen. Robert Carlyle Byrd, American politician, 1917-

A drop of ink can make a million think. –George Gordon Noel Byron, English poet, 1788-1824

But he, first with a start and then with a wink, said: “There’s another star gone out, I think”. –Byron

Fare thee well!  And if for ever,
Still for ever, fare thee well! –Byron

Gone glimmering through the dream of things that were. –Byron

Roll on, thou dark and deep blue ocean, roll! –Byron

Smiles form the channels for future tears. –Byron

Life’s too short for chess. –Henry James Byron, English dramatist, 1834-1884

 

C

I am willing to taste any drink once. –James Branch Cabell, American satirical writer, 1879-1958

Let there be more joy and laughter in you living. –Eileen Caddy

Follow your bliss. –Motto of James Campbell

It doesn’t matter what you do, so long as you do not do it in public and frighten the horses. –Mrs. Patrick Campbell (born Beatrice Stella Tanner), British actress, 1865-1940

To live in hearts we leave behind,
Is not to die. – Hallowed Ground, Thomas Campbell, Scottish poet, 1777-1844

Do not wait for the last judgment.  It comes every day. –Albert Camus, French-Algerian author and philosopher, 1913-1960

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better, whereas enslavement is the certainty of the worst. –Camus

Here’s to the pilot that (sic) weathered the storm. –George Canning, British politician, 1770-1827

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow the skunks to choose the weapons. –Joseph Gurney “Joe” Cannon (“Uncle Joe”), American conservative politician and Speaker of the House (1903-1911), 1836-1926

You can get more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone. –Al (Alphonse) Capone, American gangster and crime boss, 1899-1947

Don’t follow trends.  Start trends. –Frank Capra, American filmmaker, 1897-1991

The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet. –Benjamin Nathaniel Cardozo, American jurist, writer, and Supreme Court justice (1932-1938), 1870-1938

If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten. –George Carlin, American comedian, 1937-

Out of Eternity
The new Day is born;
Into Eternity
At night will return. –Thomas Carlyle, Scottish essayist and historian, 1795-1881

Rest is for the dead. –Carlyle

The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough. –Carlyle

The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss. –Carlyl

First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen?  Then prepare to accept it.  Then proceed to improve on the worst. –Dale Carnegie, American educator, 1888-955

No amount of ability is of the slightest account without honor. –Dale Carnegie

He who fears death has already lost the life he covets. –Cato the Elder, aka Cato the Censor, Roman statesman and writer, 234-149 BC

I would rather have men ask, after I am dead, why I have no monument than why I have one. –Marcus Porcius Cato, aka Cato the Younger, Roman politician, philosopher, and orator, 95-46 BC

If it’s your destiny to croak like a toad, then go head!  And with all your might!  Make them hear you! –Louis Ferdinand Céline, French author, 1894-1961

A silly remark can be made in Latin as well as Spanish. –Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spanish writer, 1547-1616

…blood is inherited, but virtue is achieved. –Cervantes

God bears with the wicked, but not forever. –Cervantes

One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this. –Cervantes

There is no remembrance which time does not obliterate, nor pain which death does not terminate. -Cervantes

When God sends the dawn, he sends it for all. –Cervantes

Conviction is the conscience of the mind. –Sebastien-Roch Nicholas de Chamfort, French writer, 1741-1794

The highest qualities often unfit a man for society.  We don’t take ingots to market; we take silver or small change. –Nicholas Chamfort

There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools. –Nicolas Chamfort

When in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns. –Raymond Thornton Chandler, American author, 1888-1959

Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress. –Coco Chanel, French courturière, 1883-1971

Great loves too must be endured. –Coco Chanel

In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different. –Coco Chanel

Scheherazade is easy; a little black dress is difficult. –Coco Chanel

In the end, everything is a gag. –Charlie (Charles Spencer) Chaplain, British comic actor, 1889-1977

In the stars is written the death of every man. Geoffrey Chaucer, English poet, 1340?-1400

The soul would have no rainbow
Had the eyes no tears. –John Vance Cheney

If the prince of Monaco has a roulette table, then surely convicts may gamble. –Anton Pavlovich Chekov, Russian playwright 1860-1904

Man is what he believes. –Chekov

The more refined one is, the more unhappy. –Chekov

All I desire for my own burial is not to be buried alive. –Phillip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, English writer and statesman, 1694-1773

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. –Gilbert Keith Chesterton, English writer, 1874-1936

I believe in getting into hot water.  It keeps you clean. –G.K. Chesterton

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. –G.K. Chesterton

Joking is undignified.  That’s why it’s so good for one’s soul. –G.K. Chesterton

Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear.  It annoys them very much. –G.K. Chesterton

There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than the man who eats grapenuts on principle. –G.K. Chesterton

When you find three young cads and idiots going about together and getting drunk together every day, you generally find that one of the three cads and idiots is (for some extraordinary reason) not a cad and not an idiot. –G.K. Chesterton

It is necessary to try to surpass one’s self always; this occupation ought to last as long as life. –Christina of Sweden, Swedish ruler (1632-1654) and patron of the arts, 1626-1689

Everyone has his day, and some days last longer than others. –Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, British Prime Minister (1940-1945, 1951-1955) and writer, 1874-1964

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. –Churchill

If you’re going through hell, keep going. –Churchill

I like a man who grins when he fights. –Churchill

Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it. –Churchill

Never give in. –Churchill

Nothing in the world is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result. –Churchill

We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glow-worm. –Churchill

There is no grief which time does not lessen and soften. –Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher, 106-43 BC

When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank. –Cicero

You must look out in Britain that you are not cheated by the charioteers. –Cicero

(Ouvrez les yeux!  Le monde est encore intact.)
Open you eyes!  The world is still intact. –Paul Louis Charles Claudel, French diplomat, writer, and poet, 1868-1955

The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they’re going to be when you kill them. –William Clayton

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie. – Jean Cocteau, French surrealist, 1889-1963

Always leave them laughing when you say good-bye. –George Michael Cohan, American singer, songwriter, and playwright, 1878-1942

Always leave them wanting more. –Cohan

Give my regards to Broadway,
Remember me to Harold Square,
Tell all the gang at 42nd Street
That I will soon be there. –Cohan 

No matter what may happen, whatever may befall,
I only know I’m mighty glad I’m living, that is all. –Cohan

You don’t drown by falling in the water, but by staying there. –Edwin Louis Cole

How lovely are the portals of the night,
When stars come out to watch the daylight die. – Twilight, Thomas Cole, American painter, 1801-1848

What a wonderful life I’ve had!  I only wish I’d realized it sooner. –Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Collette, French novelist, 1873-1954

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. –Collette

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end aim of weak ones. –C.C. Colton, English author and clergyman, 1780-1832

Have no friends not equal to yourself. –Confucious, Chinese philosopher, c. 551-479 BC

Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart. –Confucious

Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through.  Face it. –Joseph Conrad, Polish-born English novelist, 1857-1924

Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to be happy, to live, to love-and to put its trust in life. –Joseph Conrad

Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.  –Shirley Conran, British designer and journalist, 1932-

The opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings. –Dan Cook

Too much of a good thing can be a better thing. –Cookie Monster (Sesame Street)

If a man lacks a steak of kindly egotism, beware of him. –Charles Horton Cooley, American sociologist, 1864-1929

If you don’t say anything, you won’t be called upon to repeat it. –John Calvin Coolidge, 30th US president (1923-1929), 1872-1933

Don’t spend $2 to dry clean a shirt.  Donate it to the Salvation Army instead.  They’ll clean it and out it on a hanger.  Next morning buy it back for seventy-five cents. –William Coronel

No man is a hero to his valet. –Mme. Cornuel

A word to the wise isn’t necessary.  It’s the stupid ones who need all the advice. –Bill Cosby, American comedian, 1937-

As many live because they are afraid to die as die because they are afraid to live. –Charles Caleb Cotton, English poet and translator, 1630-1687

It is better to waste one’s youth than to do nothing with it at all. –Georges Courteline (born Georges Victor Marcek Moineau), French dramatist, 19th century

Live out of your imagination, not your history. –Stephen Covey

I read the Times and if my name is not in the obits I proceed to enjoy the day. –Noel Pierce Coward, British actor, playwright, and composer, 1899-1973, also attributed to Neil Simon

There never was a night that had no morn. –Dinah Mulock Craik, English writer and poet, 1826-1887

There is glory in a great mistake. –Nathalia Crane

Fear created gods; boldness created kings. –Prosper Jolyt Sieur De Crebillon, French dramatist, 1674-1762

It’s no good running a pig farm badly for thirty years while saying, “Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer”.  By then, pigs will be your style. –Quentin Crisp (born Denis Pratt), British author, 1908-1999

I have idols.  I just don’t worship them. –Paul Crites

I like villains because there’s something so attractive about a committed person-they have a plan, an ideology, no matter how twisted.  They’re motivated. –Russell Crowe

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. –Crowfoot

Nothing in life is to be feared.  It is only to be understood. –Marie Curie, Polish-born French chemist and Nobel Laureate, 1867-1934

 

D

This is the thing that I was born to do. –Samuel Daniel, English writer, 1562?-1619

Defeat never comes to any man until he admits it. –Josephus Daniels, American journalist and ambassador, 1862-1948

Come, follow me, and leave the world to its babblings. –Dante Alighieri, Italian poet, 1265-1321

Consider that this day ne’er dawns again. –Dante, Purgatory, Canto XII

…the power of never letting exceptions go unnoticed. –Charles Robert Darwin, British naturalist, 1809-1882

Whatever a mans actions are, such must be his spirit. –Demosthenes, Greek orator, 384-322 BC

There might be some credit in being jolly. –Charles John Huffam Dickens, British 1812-1870

We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise.
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies. –Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, American poet, 1830-1886

I want to tell you to just live in the mess.  Throw yourself out into the convulsions of the world.  I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t believe progress in necessarily part of the package.  I’m just telling you to live in it, to look at it, to witness it.  Try and get it.  Take chances, make your own work, take pride in it.  Seize the moment. –Joan Didion, commencement address, American novelist, screenwriter, and journalist, 1934-

Never go to bed mad.  Stay up and fight.  –Phyllis Diller, American author and actor, 1917-

(To Sol Linowitz, on his appointment as governor) Never for a day let them forget that you can pick up your marbles and go home. –Clarence Douglas Dillion, Swiss-born American Secretary of the Treasury (1961-1965), 1909-

It’s kind of fun to do the impossible. –Walter Elias “Walt” Disney, American animator, showman, and producer, 1901-1966

Departure should be sudden. –Benjamin “Dizzy” Disraeli, English Prime Minister (1864, 1874-1880), 1804-1881

Despair is the conclusion of fools. –Disraeli

Grief is the agony of an instant, the indulgence of grief, the blunder of a life. –Disraeli

Life is too short to be small. –Disraeli

Little things affect little minds. –Disraeli

Man is not a creature of circumstances,
Circumstances are a creature of men. –Disraeli

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the next most important thing in life is knowing when to forego an advantage. –Disraeli

If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. –Fydor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky, Russian novelist, 1821-1881

The best way to get to heaven is to take it with you. –Henry Drummond, British clergyman and writer, 1851-1897

Beware the fury of a patient man. –John Dryden, English poet, playwright, and critic, 1631-1700

Infatuated, half through conceit, half through love of my art, I achieve the impossible working as no one else ever works. –Alexander Dumas, fils, French dramatist, 1824-1895

 

E

Adventure is worthwhile in itself. –Amelia Mary Earhart, American aviator, 1897?-193

Love your enemies.  It makes them so damn mad. –P.D. East

Long experience has taught me that to be criticized is not always to be wrong. –Anthony Eden, British conservative politician

Restlessness is discontent-and discontent is the first necessity of progress.  Show me a thoroughly satisfied man-and I will show you a failure. –Thomas Alva Edison (“The Wizard of Menlo Park”), American inventor, 1847-1931

He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. –Albert Einstein, German-born American physicist and Nobel Laureate, 1879-1955

Imagination is more important than knowledge. –Einstein

I never think of the future.  It comes soon enough. –Einstein

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. –Einstein

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it. –Einstein

Never lose a holy curiosity. –Einstein

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. –Einstein

It is never too late to be what you might have been. –George Eliot (born Marian Evans), English novelist, 1819-1880

Say “I love you” to those you love, the eternal silence is long enough to be silent in, and that awaits us all. –George Eliot

Rule #1: Don’t sweat the small stuff.
Rule #2: It’s all small stuff. –Robert S. Eliot

The place where optimism most flourishes is in the insane asylum. –Henry Havelock Ellis, British psychologist, 1859-1939

To be a leader of men one must turn one’s back on man. –Havelock Ellis

There is joy in everything. –Elmo (Sesame Street)

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. –Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, poet, and philosopher, 1803-1882

Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live. -Emerson

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity. –Emerson

No sensible person ever made an apology. –Emerson

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.  –Emerson

Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can. –Emerson

Scatter joy. –Emerson

The only reward of virtue is virtue. –Emerson

We gain the strength of the temptations we resist. –Emerson

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say. –Emerson

Only the educated are free. –Epicetus, Greek Stoic philosopher, c. 55 – c. 135

There is nothing good or evil save in the will. –Epicetus

Concealed talent brings no reputation. –Desiderius Erasmus, Dutch humanist, c. 1466-1536

Fortune favors the audacious. –Erasmus

Win as if you were used to it; lose as if you enjoyed it for a change. –Golnik Eric

Only those who attempt the absurd…will achieve the impossible.  I think…I think it’s I the basement.  Let me go upstairs and check. –Maurits Cornelius Escher, Dutch artist, 1898-1972

The undertaking of a new action brings new strength. –Evenius

Perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. –Antoine de Saint Exupéry, French writer and aviator, 1900-1944

 

F

He who doesn’t fear death dies only once. –Giovanni Falcone, Italian judge, 1939-1992

Those who know the least obey the best. –George Farquhar, Irish dramatist, 1678-1707

Others have done it before me.  I can, too. –Corporal John Faunce, World War One

Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame-thrower. –Bruce Feirstein, American author, 1882-1953

Start off every day with a smile, and get it over with. –W.C. Fields, American entertainer, 1880-1946

Vitality shows not in the ability to persist but in the ability to start over. –Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, American author, 1896-1940 

The ultimate goal should be doing your best and enjoying it. –Peggy Gale Fleming, American figure skater, 1948-

Better a living beggar than a buried emperor. – Jean de La Fontaine, French poet, 1621-1695

It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father. –La Fontaine

No path of flowers leads to glory. –La Fontaine

It’s a very short trip.  While alive, live. –Malcom Forbes, American
millionaire and publisher of
Forbes
magazine (1957-1990), 1919-1990       

Those who never get carried away should be. -Malcom Forbes

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. –Henry Ford, American automobile manufacturer, 1863-1947

America is rather like life.  You can usually find what it is you look for.  It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large. –E.M. Forester

Always hold your head up, but be careful to keep your nose at a friendly level. –Max L. Forman

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. –Viktor Frankl, Austrian psychiatrist and concentration camp survivor, 1905-1997

All would live long but none would be old. –Benjamin Franklin, American Revolutionary leader, author, scientist, and ambassador, 1706-1790

He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals. –Franklin

If rascals knew the advantages of virtue they would become honest men out of rascality. –Franklin

If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself. –Franklin

We must all hang together, or we shall hang separately. –Franklin

Where liberty is, there is my country. –Franklin, attributed

Every man must get to heaven in his own way. –Frederick II, “the Great” of Prussia, Prussian ruler (1740-1786) and military leader, 1712-1786

It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself. –Betty Goldstein Friedan, American feminist and author, 1921-

It’s better to be competent than well liked. –Martha Friedman

Love, while you are able to love. –Hermann Ferdinand Freiligrath, German poet, writer, and revolutionary, 19th century

I hold it to be the indispensable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way. –Robert Lee Frost, American poet, 1874-1963

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. –Frost

We enter the world alone; we leave it alone. –James Anthony Froude, British historian and biographer, 1818-1894

For precocity, some great price is always demanded sooner or later in life. –Margaret Fuller, American writer and lecturer, 1810-1850

It seems that it is madder never to abandon oneself than often to be infatuated, better to be wounded, a captive and a slave, than always to walk in armor. –Margaret Fuller

Beware of no man more than thyself. –Thomas Fuller, English clergyman and author, 1608-1661

Every heart hath its own ache. –Thomas Fuller

Forgetting of a wrong is mild revenge. –Thomas Fuller

Sacrifice not thy heart upon every altar. –Thomas Fuller

 

G

No man loses his freedom except through his own weakness. –Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Indian nationalist, 1869-1948

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by a spectacular error. –John Kenneth Galbraith, Canadian-born American economist, 1908-

(Before the Inquisition) But it does move. –Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer and physicist, 1564-1642

You cannot teach a man anything; you can help him to find it within himself. –Galileo

Democracy is measured not by its’ leaders doing extraordinary things, but by its’ citizens doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. –John Gardner, Jr., American author, 1933-1982

Always be a first rate version of yourself rather than a second-rate version of somebody else. –Judy Garland, American actress and singer, 1922-1969

I am in earnest-I will not equivocate-I will not excuse-I will not retreat a single inch and I will be heard. –William Lloyd Garrison, American abolitionist leader, 1805-1879

An error gracefully acknowledged is a victory won. –Caroline E. Gascoigne

I’ll not listen to reason.  Reason always means what someone else has got to say. –Elizabeth Cleghorne Stevenson Gaskell, English novelist, 18180-186

Life is what comes next. –Jóse Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher, 1883-1955

Always go to the bathroom when you have a chance. –George V, British monarch (1910-1936), 1865-1936

Live as you will have wished to live when you are dying. –Christian F. Gilbert

Death?  Why this fuss about death?  Use you imagination, try to visualize a world without death!  Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil. –Charlotte Perkins Gilman, American feminist, writer, and editor, 1860-1935

What you get is a living-what you give is a life. –Lillian Diana Gish, American actress, 1893-1993

Just remember when you think all is lost the future remains. –Bob Goddard

A man’s foibles are what make him loveable. –Johan Wolfgang von Göethe, German poet, playwright, and scientist, 1749-1832

A useless life is an early death. –Göethe

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world. –Göethe

Do you know the land where the lemon trees flower? –Göethe

Enjoy what you can.  Endure what you must. –Göethe

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is. –Göethe

He who is firm in will molds the world to himself. –Göethe

If you must tell me your opinion, tell what you believe in.  I have plenty of doubts of my own. –Göethe

It is better to do the most trifling thing in the world than to regard half an hour as a trifle. –Göethe

It is better to wear out one’s shoes than one’s sheets. –Göethe

It is much easier to recognize error than to find truth. –Göethe

Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live. –Göethe

Mediocrity has no greater consolation than in the thought that genius is not immortal. –Göethe

Nothing is worth more than this day. –Göethe

Of the truly creative no one is ever master, it must be left to master itself. –Göethe

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if possible, to speak a few reasonable words. –Göethe

Only when we know little do we know anything; doubt grows with knowledge. –Göethe

Our friends show us what we can do; our enemies show us what we must. –Göethe

Plunge boldly into the think of life. –Göethe

Remember to live. –Göethe

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous; the sensible man hardly anything. –Göethe

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love. –Göethe

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. –Göethe

Yes!  To this thought I hold with firm persistence,
The last result of wisdom stamps it true:
He only earns his freedom and existence
Who daily conquers them anew –Göethe 

When we can’t dream any longer we die. –Emma Goldman, American anarchist, 1869-1940

The first blow is half the battle. –Oliver Goldsmith, Irish author, poet, and playwright, 1728-1774

If you don’t throw it, then they can’t hit it. –Lefty Gomez, American Hall of Fame baseball player

It is better to be a has-been than one of those never-wases. –H. Gordon-Brown

Freedom is more precious than any gifts for which you might you tempted to give it up. –Baltasar Gracián y Morales, Spanish writer and Jesuit, 1601-1658

Keep to yourself the final touches of your art. –Gracian

Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose. –Gracian

No one looks at the blazing sun; all do it when it is eclipsed. –Gracian

Superiority is always detested. –Gracian

There is a big difference between the bestowal of your affection and the bestowal of yourself. –Gracian

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally. –Gracian

There is no need to show your ability before everyone. –Gracian

Life is a jest, and all things show it.
I thought so once, but now I know it. –John Gray

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. –Thomas Gray, British poet, forerunner of Romanticism, 1716-1771

Death is never at a loss for occasions. –Greek Anthology, Book IX

(To a young Joey Adams) Don’t worry about people knowing you, son, just make yourself worth knowing. –Fiorello Henry La Guardia (“the Little Flower”), American politician, 1882-1947

 

 

 

H 

Rule of survival: Pack your own parachute. –T.L. Hakala

A man may dwell so long upon a thought that it may take him prisoner. –Edward Frederick Linley Halifax, English statesman, 1881-1959

He is great enough that is his own master. –Joseph Hall, English bishop, philosopher, and satirist, 1574-1656

I walked a mile with Sorrow
And ne’er a word said she;
But, oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me. – Along the Road, Robert Browning Hamilton, British poet, 1812-1889

Never “for the sake of peace and quiet” deny your convictions. –Dag Hjalmer Agné Carl Hammarskjöld, Swedish political leader, United Nations Secretary General (1953-1961), and Nobel Laureate, 1905-1961

Do not seek death.  Death will find you.  But seek the road which makes a death a fulfillment. –Hammarskjold

Woe unto him that is never alone, and cannot bear to be alone. –P.G. Hammerton

We will either find a way or make one. –Hannibal, Carthaginian general, 247-183? BC

The key is action. –Michael Hanson

You was a good man, and did good things. –Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet, 1840-1928

Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one’s horse as he is leaping. –Julius C. (1795-1855) and Augustus W. (1792-1834) Hare, both English clerics and writers

The bravest thing you can do is when you are not brave is to profess courage and act accordingly. –Corra May Harris, American author, 1869-1935

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. –Sydney J. Harris, American journalist, 1917-

Great lives never go out.  They go on. –Benjamin Harrison, 23rd US president (1889-1893), 1833-1901

If you want peace, understand war. –Basil Henry Liddell Hart, British military analyst, 1895-1970

The greatest masterpieces were once pigments on a palette. –S. Haskins

The man who is too old to learn was probably always too old to learn. –Haskins

Capital punishment is our society’s recognition of the sanctity of human life. –Orrin G. Hatch, American conservative politician, 1934-

Disorder increase with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases. –Stephen William Hawkins, British theoretical physicist, 1942-

It is because the spirit is inestimable that the lifeless body is valued so little. – The Blithdale Romance, Nathaniel Hawthorne, American novelist, 1804-1864

Do not make a surfeit of friendship over sanguine enthusiasm, nor expect it to last forever…Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone-but part, while you can part friends. –William Henry Hazlitt, English essayist, 1778-1830

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be. –Hazlitt

Those only deserve a monument who do not need one. –Hazlitt

One should forgive ones enemies, but not before they are hanged. –Heinrich Heine, German poet and journalist, 1797-1856

The sea has its pearls,
The heavens its’ stars-
But my heart, my heart,
My heart has its love. –Heine

Where books are burnt, humans will be burnt in the end. –Heine

Be careful how you interpret the world: it is that way. –Joseph Heller, American author, 1923-1999

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth. –Lillian Florence Hellman, American playwright, 1907-1984

It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their finest hour. –Lillian Hellman

Man is not made for defeat. –Ernest Miller Hemingway, American writer, 1899-1961

Into the night go one and all. – The Ballad of Dead Actors, William Ernest Henley, British writer and editor, 1849-1903

Let us break out and taste the morning prime…Let us be drunk. –Henley

Life’s a dance. –Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid. 

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul. –Henley, Invictus

What is to come we know not.  But we know that what has been was good. -Henley

All this and heaven too. –Mathew Henry, English Biblical scholar, 1662-1714

For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst and provide for it. –Patrick Henry, American Revolutionary leader and orator, 1736-1799

The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone, it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. –Patrick Henry

Whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude.  In the final analysis, you have got to forget not to laugh. –Katherine Houghton Hepburn, American actress, 1909-

Character is destiny. –Heracleitus, Greek philosopher, fl. 500 BC

Do well and right, and let the world sink. –George Herbert, English metaphysical poet, 1593-1633

Praise day at night, and life at the end. –George Herbert

The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken. –George Herbert

You must lose a fly to catch a trout. –George Herbert

Know when to speak, for many times it brings
Danger to give the best advice to kings. –Robert Herrick, English lyric poet, 1591-1674

It will not always be summer; build barns. –Hesiod, Greek poet, fl. 700 BC

Let the world slide, let the world go,
A fig for care, and a fig for woe!
If I can’t pay, why I can owe,
And death makes equal the high and low. –John Heywood, English writer and epigrammatist, 1497?-1580? 

When the iron is hot, strike. –John Heywood

…to be really cosmopolitan, a man must be at home even in his own country. –Thomas Wentworth Strorrow Higginson, American writer and soldier, 1823-1911

Happiness is not a destination.  It is a way of life. –Burton Hills

In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means. –Fern Hill 

(Ars longa, vita brevis)
Art is long, life is brief. –Hippocrates (“The Father of Medicine”), Greek physician, 460?-377? BC

Strength lies not in defense but in attack. –Adolf Hitler, German dictator, 1889-1945

To imitate one’s enemy is to dishonor. –Thomas Hobbes, English political philosopher, 1588-1679

If you don’t run your own life, somebody else will. –John Atkinson Hobson, English economist

The handwriting on the wall may be a forgery. –Hodgson

And what is your duty?  Whatever the day calls for. –Eric Hoffer, American philosopher, 1902-1983

He who doesn’t think too much of himself is much more than he thinks. –Eric Hoffer

The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do but in what we are free not to do. –Eric Hoffer

We feel free when we escape-even if it be but from the frying pan into the fire. –Eric Hoffer

No one can disgrace us but ourselves. –J.G. Holland

Our dead brothers still live for us and bid us think of life, not death-of life to which in their youth they leant the passion and glory of Spring.  As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will. –Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr., American jurist and Supreme Court justice (1902-1932), 1841-1935

The act of faith is when a man decides he is not God. –Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The young man knows the rules but the old man knows the exceptions. –Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this. –Homer, Greek epic poet, fl. 850 BC

The tribute of a tear is all I crave. –Homer

The man who declares that survival at all costs is the end of existence is morally dead, because he’s prepared to sacrifice all others which give life it’s meaning. –Sidney Hook, American social commentator and philosopher, 1902-1989

‘Tis always morning somewhere in the world. –Richard Hengest Horne

Each of us has the chance to opt for the shoestrings or the straws. –Dr. John A. Howard, president, Rockford College

If a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do.  Think up something appropriate and do it. –Howe

When in doubt, win the trick –Edmond Hoyle, British writer on card games, 1672-1769

Do not take life too seriously.  You will never get out of it alive. –Elbert Hubbard, American author, 1856-1915

If you can’t answer a man’s arguments, all is not lost.  You can still call him vile names. –Elbert Hubbard

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one. –Elbert Hubbard

You had better be a round peg in a square hole than a square peg in a square hole.  The latter is in for life, while the first is only an indeterminate sentence. –Elbert Hubbard.

If we must suffer, let us suffer nobly. –Victor Marie Hugo, French poet, novelist, and playwright, 1802-1885

And what is the greatest number? Number one. –David Hume, British philosopher and historian, 1711-1776

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. –Hubert Horatio Humphrey, 38th US vice-president, 1911-1978

Some of the very greatest enterprises in the world have been carried out successfully simply because the people who undertook them did not count the cost; and I ma very much of the opinion that, in this case, the most instructive consideration for us is the cost of doing nothing. –Thomas Henry Huxley, British biologist, 1825-1895

There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life. –T.H. Huxley

 

 

I

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. –Dolores Ibárruri Gómez, aka La Pasionaria, Spanish communist, 1895-1989

You should never wear your best trousers when you go to fight for freedom and truth. – An Enemy of the People, Henrik Johan Ibsen, Norwegian dramatist, 1828-1906

The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone. –Ibsen

 

J

One man with courage makes a majority. –Andrew Jackson (“Old Hickory”), 7th US president (1829-1837), 1767-1845

It’s all right letting yourself go as long as you can get yourself back. –Mick Jagger, British rock musician

Do every day or two something for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may not find you unnerved and untrained to stand the test. –William James, American psychologist and philosopher, 1842-1910

For God’s sake, choose a self and stand by it. –William James

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. –William James

This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it. –William James

 An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: “There is very little difference between one man and another, but what little there is very important.” –William James

To change one’s life:
1.        Start immediately
2.    Do it flamboyantly
3.       No exceptions. –William Jame 

To spend life for something which outlasts it. –William James

We are all ready to be savage in some cause.  The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause. –William James

It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life.  –Randell Jarrell

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. –Alan Jay

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. –Thomas Jefferson, American Revolutionary leader, writer, and 3rd president (1801-1809), 1743-1826

I respect faith but doubt is what gets you an education. –Jefferson

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. –Jefferson, personal motto

It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar. –Jerome Klapka Jerome, British author, 1859-1927

Monuments need not be erected for the righteous; their deeds are their memorials. –Jerusalem Talmud

Cheer up.  The worst is yet to come. –Philander Johnson

Consider with yourself what your flattery is worth before you bestow it so freely. –Samuel “Dr.” Johnson, English author and lexicographer, 1709-1784

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. –Samuel “Dr.” Johnson

He who waits to do a great deal of good all at once will never do anything. –Samuel “Dr.” Johnson

 I hate a man whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark. –Samuel “Dr.” Johnson

Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings; let us therefore be cautious how we strip her. –Samuel “Dr.” Johnson

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent. –Samuel “Dr.” Johnson

No man ever yet became great by imitation. –Samuel “Dr.” Johnson

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rules of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than secures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor. –Samuel “Dr.” Johnson

Reflect that life, like every other blessing
Derives its value from its use alone. –Samuel “Dr.” Johnson

To live is like to love-all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct is for it. –Samuel “Dr.” Johnson

What is easy is seldom excellent. –Samuel “Dr.” Johnson

The trick is not how much pain you feel but how much joy you feel.  Any idiot can feel pain.  Life is full of excuses to feel pain, not excuses to live. –Erica Mann Jong, American author, 1942-

Calumnies are best answered with silence. –Benjamin “Ben” Jonson, English writer and actor, 1572-1637

Don’t compromise your self.  You are all you’ve got. –Janis Joplin, American rock musician

Death is psychologically as important as birth…Shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose. –Carl Gustav Jung, January 16, 1961, Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychiatry, 1875-1961

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you. –Jung

The achievements which society awards are won at the cost of diminution of personality. –Jung

No man ever became wicked all at once. –Juvenal, Roman satirical poet, 40-125

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem on another. –Juvenal

 

K

Freedom is that faculty which enlarges the usefulness of all other faculties. –Immanual Kant, German philosopher, 1724-1804

It is not God’s will that we merely be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy. –Kant

What can I know?  What ought I to do?  What can I hope? –Kant

Life is a great big canvas.  Throw all the paint on it you can. –Danny Kaye, American entertainer, 1913-1987

You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint paradise, then in you go. –Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek writer, 1885-1957

The world is full of suffering, but it is also full of the overcoming of it. –Helen Adams Keller, American author and lecturer, 1880-1968

We have come too far, we have sacrificed too much, to disdain the future now. –John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th US president (1961-1963), 1917-1963

It is better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all of your life. –Elizabeth Kenny, Australian nurse, 1880?-1952

He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals. –Orpheus C. Kerr, aka Robert Henry Newell, American humorist and journalist, 1836-1901

Failing is one of the great arts in the world –Charles Franklin Kettering, American electrical engineer and manufacturer, 1876-1958

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking. –John Maynard Keynes, British economist, 1883-1946

I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell,
And by and by my Soul returned to me,
And answered, “I myself am Heav’n and Hell” –Omar Khayyam, Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer, 1050?-1123

One must avoid praying when one is wearing socks that are too tight. –Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iranian Shiite leader and head of state (1979-1989), 1900-1989

A man who could not seduce men cannot save them either. –Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, Danish religious philosopher, 1813-1855

But humor is also the joy which has overcome the world. –Kierkegaard

During the first period of a man’s life, the danger is not to take the risk. –Kierkegaard

Nowhere to fall but off.
Nowhere to stand but on. –Benjamin King

And so make life, death and that vast forever
One grand sweet song. – A Farewell, Kingsley

Look at the bow in the cloud, in the very rain itself. That is a sign that the sun, though you cannot see it, is shining still -- that up above beyond the cloud is still sunlight and warmth and cloudless blue sky. –Charles Kingsley, British cleric and writer, 1819-1875

Each life makes its’ own imitation of immortality. –Stephen Edwin King, American novelist, 1947-

Fill the unforgiving moment with 60 seconds worth of distance run. –Rudyard Alfred Kipling, British writer, 1865-1936

I gloat!  Hear me gloat!  Kipling

Never give up.  For fifty years they said the horse was through.  Now look at him, a status symbol. –Fletcher Knebel

Every soul must taste of death. –Koran

 

L

To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic. –Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine, French Romantic poet, 1790-1869

 Of Byron) Mad, bad, and dangerous to know. –Caroline Lamb, English essayist and critic, 1755-1834

The truest measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good. –Ann Landers (born Esther Pauline “Eppie” Freidman Lederer), American advice columnist, 1918-

Music is love in search of a word. –Sidney Lanier, American writer and musician, 1842-1881

Don’t give up the ship. –James Lawrence, American naval officer and Commander of the Chesapeake, 1781-1813

Generally speaking, it is inhumane to detain a fleeting insight.  –Fran Lebowitz, American journalist, 1951-

He who limps is still walking. –Stanislaw Jerzu Lec, Polish aphorist, poet, and satirist, 1909-1966    

The first requisite for immortality is death. –Stanislaw J. Lec

Stay humble.  Always answer your phone-no matter who else is in the car. –Jack Lemmon, American actor, 1925-2001

Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted. –John Winston Lennon, British rock musician, 1940-1980

When we cannot bear to be alone it means that we do not value the only companion we will have from birth to death-ourselves. –Eda J. Le Shan, American educator and author, 1922-

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all causes think for yourself. –Lessing

There’s a fine line between genius and insanity.  I have erased that line. –Oscar Levant, American pianist and composer, 1906-19720

One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. –David Levine

Don’t explain your characters-make ‘em live. –Sinclair Lewis, American novelist, 1885-1951

(To Louis XVI, July 14, 1789) It is not a revolt.  It is a revolution. –Duc de Liancourt

It is a golden rule not to judge men by their opinions but by what their opinions make of them. –Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, German physicist and philosopher, 1742-1799

Never undertake anything for which you wouldn’t have the courage to ask the blessings of Heaven. –G.C. Lichtenberg

Some people think that whatever is done solemnly must make sense. –G.C. Lichtenberg

There are incompetent enthusiasts, and they are a mighty dangerous lot. –G.C. Lichtenberg

If I am killed I can die but once;
But to live in constant dread of it is to die over and over again. –Abraham Lincoln, 16th US president (1861-1865), 1809-1865

I’m a slow walker, but I never walk back. –Lincoln

It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself. –Lincoln

Men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity. –Lincoln

“We trust sir, that God is on our side.”
“It is more important to know that we are on God’s side.” –Lincoln, reply to a telegram

When I do good, I feel good.  When I do bad, I feel bad.  And that’s my religion. –Lincoln

Ignorance is voluntary misfortune. –Nicholas Ling

You can’t expect to win unless you know why you lose. –Benjamin Lipson

Events of great consequence often spring from trifling circumstances. –Livy, Roman historian, 59 BC – AD 17

Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is. –Vince Lombardi, American football coach, 1913-1970

Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart. –Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, American poet, 1807-1882

Know how sublime a thing is to suffer and be strong. –Longfellow

No man is so poor as to have nothing worth giving. –Longfellow

Resolve, and thou art free. –Longfellow

Something attempted, something done, has earned a nights’ repose. –Longfellow

The nearer the dawn, the darker the night. –Longfellow

The night shall be filled with music
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away. –Longfellow

Sex appeal is 50% what you’ve got and 50% what people think you’ve got. –Sophia Loren, Italian actress, 1934-

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more. –Richard Lovelace, English poet, 1618-1658

Once to every man and nation comes to decide, in the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side. –James Russell Lowell, American editor, poet, and diplomat, 1819-1891

The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught as that every child should be given the wish to learn. –John Lubbock, British banker, politician, and naturalist, 1834-1913

What we see depends mainly on what we look for. –John Lubbock

It is a world to see. –John Lyly, English author, 1554-1606

Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead. –Robert A. Lynd, Irish essayist and journalist, 1879-194 

Who would wish to be valued must make himself scarce. –Thomas Lynch, Jr., American farmer and Revolutionary politician, signer of the Declaration of Independence, 1749-1779  

 

M

In war there is no substitute for victory –Douglas MacArthur, American general, US Chief of Staff (1930-1935), 1889-1964

To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. –George MacDonald, Scottish children’s writer, 1824-1905

It has always seemed to me more artistic, when the curtain falls on the last performance, to accept the inevitable E finita la comedia.  It is tempting perhaps, but unrewarding to hang about the green room after final retirement from the stage. –Harold MacMillian, British Prime Minister (1957-1963), 1894-1986

Never tell a story because it is true: tell it because it is a good story. –John Pentland Mahaffy, Swiss-born Irish educator and philologist, 1839-1919

Confidence is courage at ease. –Daniel Maher

Delicacy is to love what grace is to beauty. –Mme. Françoise d’Aubigné de Maintenon, French consort and secret wife of Louis XIV (c. 1685), 1635-1719

I don’t know what a scoundrel is like, but I know what a respectable man is like, and it’s enough to make your flesh creep. –Joseph-Marie de Maistre, French diplomat and philosopher, 1753-1821

Time brings not death, it brings but changes. –Douglas Malloch

Never assume that habitual silence means ability in reserve. –Geoffrey Mandan

To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike. –Horace Mann, American educator, 1796-1859

Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them. –Thomas Mann, German author and critic, 1875-1955

Risk!  Risk anything!  Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices.  Do the hardest thing on earth for you.  Act for yourself.  Face the truth. –Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand-born British writer, 1888-1923

We begin to die as soon as we are born, and the end is linked to the beginning. –Marcus Manilus

A little while with grief and laughter,
And then the day will close;
The shadows gather…what comes after
No man knows. – Don (Donald Robert Perry) Marquis, American humorist and journalist, 1878-1937

If a child shows himself incorrigible, he should be decently and quietly beheaded at the age of twelve, lest he grow to maturity, marry, and perpetuate his kind. –Don Marquis

Thrift cannot be too highly commended.  Teach all those with whom you come in contact to be saving.  You never know when you may need their savings to finance one of your ventures. –Don Marquis

Laugh it off, laugh it off, it is all part of life’s rich pageant. –Arthur Marshall

Tomorrow life is too late, live now. –Martial, Roman poet and epigrammatist, fl, 1st century BC

Why do strong arms fatigue themselves with frivolous dumbbells?  To dig a vineyard is a worthier excuse for a man. –Martial

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and sky;
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by. –John Edward Masefield, British poet, 1878-1967

“Be yourself!” is about the worst advice you can give some people. –Tom Masson

Art for art’s sake makes no more sense than gin for gin’s sake. –William Somerset Maugham, British author, 1876-1966

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing to do with it.  -Maugham

Impropriety is the soul of wit. –Maugham

Let’s face it: Beauty is a bit of a bore. –Maugham

Success, I don’t believe it has had any effect on me.  For one thing I always expected it. –Maugham

Laugh at yourself before anyone else can. –Elsa Maxwell, American gossip columnist and professional hostess, 1883-1963

Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either. –Golda Meir, Russian-born Israeli politician, 1898-1978

They talk of the dignity of work.  Bosh.  The dignity is in leisure. –Herman Melville, American writer, 1819-1891

To scale great heights we must come out of the lowermost depths.  The way to Heaven is through Hell. –Melville

Every normal man be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. –Henry Louis Mencken, American satirist and journalist, 1880-1956

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie.  I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave.  And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant. –H.L. Mencken

In this world of sin and sorrow, there is always something to be thankful for. –H.L. Mencken

The great artists of the world are never Puritans and seldom even ordinarily respectable. –H.L. Mencken

The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do. –H.L. Mencken

If you cannot win, you must win. –Maxim of Rabbi Menshim Mendl of Kotsk

There is no freedom for the weak. –Meredith

I am still learning. –Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, Italian artist, 1475-1564

Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish. –Michelangelo

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle. –Michelangelo

What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed? –Michelange 

Only the untalented can afford to be humble. –Sylvia Miles

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way. –John Stuart Mill, British philosopher and economist, 1806-1873

My candle burns bright at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-
It gives a lovely light. –Edna St. Vincent Millay, American poet, 1892-1950

Awake, arise, or be forever fallen. –John Milton, English poet and scholar, 1608-1674

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven –Milton

Men fear death as if unquestionably the greatest evil, and yet no man knows that it may not be the greatest good. –William Mitford, English historian, 18th century

Be nice to people on your way up, because you’ll meet them on your way down. Wilson Mizner, American dramatist and humorist, 1876-1973

Never call a man a failure; borrow from him. –Wilson Mizner

It is not only what we do, but what we do not do or which we are accountable. –Jean Baptiste Pocquelin Molière, French dramatist, 1622-1673

The dead have nothing except the memory they’ve left. –Ferenc Molnár, Hungarian writer, 1878-1952

Choose your love.  Love your choice. –Thomas S. Monson

The idea is to die young as late as possible. –Ashley Montagu, British-born American anthropologist, 1905-

I care not so much what I am to others as I respect what I am in myself.  I will be rich by myself and not by borrowing. –Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, French essayist, 1533-1592

In solitude be to thyself a throng. –Montaigne

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately. -Montaigne

No noble thing can be done without risks. –Montaigne

Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live to the purpose. –Montaigne

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories. –Montaigne

There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is ordered by orders, method, and discipline. –Montaigne

There is nothing more notable in Socrates that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent. –Montaigne

Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal. –Moore

Nothing is more depressing than the conviction that one is not a hero. –George Augustus Moore, Irish writer, 1852-1933

The difficulty in life is the choice. –George Moore

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal. –Hannah More, British writer, 1745-1833

You can do business with anyone, but you can only sail a boat with a gentleman. –John Pierpont Morgan, American financier and philanthropist, 1837-1913

A man who has never made a woman mad is a failure in life. –Christopher Darlington Morley, American writer and journalist, 1890-1957

A real individual is a man who would hate to be anybody but himself. –Henry A. Murray

How glorious it is-and also how painful-to be an exception. –Louis Charles Alfred de Musset, French Romantic poet, 1810-1857

Defeat is worse than death because you live with defeat. –Bill Mussleman

Some people have so much respect for their superiors that they have none left for themselves. –Peter McArthur

The world belongs to the enthusiast who keeps cool. –William McFee

If a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he can not be loyal to anything. –Claude McKay, Jamaican-born American writer, 1890-1948

Bored with your new enemies?  Make new ones!  Tell two of your women friends that they look alike. –Mignon McLaughlin, American author and editor, 1915?-

What you can’t get out of, get into wholeheartedly. –McLaughlin

 

N

 

All you earnest young men out there to save the world…please, have a laugh. –Reinhold Neibuhr, American theologian, 1892-1971

You must create your own world.  I am responsible for my world. –Louise Nevelson, Russian-born American sculptor, 1899-1998

 

A hatred of mediocrity ill becomes a philosopher…Exactly because he is the exception, he must protect the rule. –Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, German philosopher, 1844-1900

A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. –Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

Become who you are. –Nietzsche

Believe me!  The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from lie is to live dangerously. –Nietzsche

Even a thought, even a possibility, can shatter us and transform us. –Nietzsche, Eternal Recurrence

Every tiny step forward in the world was formerly made at the cost of mental and physical torture. –Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals

Formula of my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal. –Nietzsche

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. –Nietzsche

He who laughs best today will also laugh last. –Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Morals

If you would go up high, than use your own legs! –Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

Is not life one hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves? –Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

I teach you the Superman.  Man is something that is to be surpassed. –Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Prologue

I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance. –Nietzsche

Let us stamp the impress of eternity upon our lives. –Nietzsche, Eternal Recurrence

Live in danger.  Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius. –Nietzsche

Live that thou may desire to live again. –Nietzsche, Eternal Recurrence

Man is something that shall be surpassed, what have you done to surpass him? –Nietzsche

Many a man fails to become a great thinker only because his memory is too good. –Nietzsche

Many people wait through their whole lives for the chance to be good in their own fashion. –Nietzsche

Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter. –Nietzsche

Of all that is written, I love only that which is written in a person’s own blood. –Nietzsche

Pathetic attitudes are not in keeping with greatness. –Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

The author must keep his mouth shut when his words start to speak. –Nietzsche

The greatest events are not our noisiest but our stillest hours. –Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

The idealist is incorrigible-if he is turned out of his heaven, he makes an ideal of his hell. –Nietzsche

The maturity of man-to have reacquired the seriousness he had as a child at play. –Nietzsche

The music should be in you.  Then you can make the world dance. –Nietzsche

This secret spoke Life herself unto me: “Behold”, said she, “I am that which must ever surpass itself”. –Nietzsche

The surest way to corrupt a young man is to teach him to esteem more highly those who think alike than those who think differently. –Nietzsch

The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others. –Nietzsche

Thoughts that come with dove’s footsteps guide the world. –Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

To take upon ourselves not punishment, but guilt- that alone would be god-like. –Nietzsche

We should consider every day lost in which we have not danced at least once. –Nietzsche

What is evil?  Whatever springs from weakness. –Nietzsche

When man…wounds himself, it is that very wound which forces him to live. –Nietzsche

I have loved many the more and the few-
I have loved many, that I might love you. –Grace Fallow Norton

Kind words will never die-neither will they buy groceries. –Edgar Wilson Nye, American humorist, 1850-1896

I do not believe that it will always be popular to wear mourning for our friends, unless we fell a little doubtful about where they went. –Nye

 

O

In love there are two things-bodies and words. –Joyce Carol Oates, American writer, 1938-

Never say you don’t know-nod wisely, leave calmly, then run like hell to find the nearest expert. –S.M. Oddo

Develop your eccentricities while you’re young.  That way, when you are old, people won’t think you’re going gaga. –David Ogilvy, British-born American advertising executive, 1911-

Don’t hunt.  Aim out of the ballpark.  Aim for the company of the immortals. –David Ogilvy

Those who flee from temptation generally leave a forwarding address. –Lane Olinghouse

 What happiness is there which is not purchased with more or less of pain? –Margaret Oliphant-Wilson, English novelist and historian, 1828-1897

The true scientist never loses his faculty of amusement. –Julius Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist, 1902-1967

There are some situations that one can only escape by acting like a devil or a lunatic. –George Orwell, British author, 1903-1950

In seeking to save another beware of drowning yourself. –Francis Osborne

Either do not attempt at all, or go through with it. –Ovid, Roman poet, 43 BC - c. 17

If a man does his best, what else is there? –Ovid

My hopes are not always realized, but I always hope. –Ovid

The prickly thorn often bears soft roses. –Ovid

It’s my rule never to lose my temper till it would be detrimental to lose it. –Sean O’Casey, Irish dramatist, 1880-1964

It was beautiful and simple as all truly great scandals are. –O. Henry (born William Sydney Porter), American writer, 1862-1910

Life is just one damned thing after another. –Frank Ward O’Malley

Don’t send funny greetings cards on birthdays or at Christmas.  Save them for funerals when their cheery effect is needed.  –Patrick Jake O’Rourke, American journalist and humorist, 1947-

People shouldn’t be treated like objects.  They aren’t that valuable.  –P.J. O’Rourke

Seriousness is stupidity sent to college.  –P.J. O’Rourke

The only really firm rule of taste about cross-dressing is that neither sex should ever wear anything they haven’t yet figured out how to go to the bathroom in. –P.J. O’Rourke

 

P

Don’t look back.  Someone might be gaining on you. –Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige, American Hall of Fame baseball player, 1906-1982 

Never got to bed with anyone whose emotional problems are greater than your own. –Satchel Paige

Character is much easier kept than reclaimed. –Thomas Paine, American Revolutionary leader, writer, and political theorist, 1737-1809

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression. –Thomas Paine

You can’t bring back the past, and you’re not promised the future, so enjoy life now. –Kimo Paki

Act apologetic and you will lose.  Act certain and you will lose. –Robert Pante

For sorrow is not for the loss of a good we have never tasted, but for the loss of a good we are used to having. -Paracles

Brevity is the soul of lingerie. –Dorothy Rothschild Parker, American humorous writer, 1893-1967

Drink and dance and laugh and lie
Love, the reeling midnight through
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.) –Dorothy Parker

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. –Dolly Parton, American singer and actress, 1946-

I’m not offended by dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb, and I know I’m not blonde. –Dolly Parton

Fame is so sweet that we love anything with which we connect it, even death. –Blaise Pascal, French scientist and philosopher, 1623-1662

Force and not opinion is the queen of the world; but it is opinion that uses the force. –Pascal

My strength lies solely in my tenacity. –Louis Pasteur, French chemist, 1822-1895

Do your damnedest in an ostentatious manner all the time. –George Smith Patton, Jr., American general, 1885-1945

Keep going.  Someone must be on top, why not you? –Patton

Take calculated risks.  That’s quite different from being rash. –Patton

We do not remember days, we remember moments. –Cesare Pavese, Italian poet, novelist, and translator, 1908-1950

Think or be damned. –Byron Penton

Wait for the wisest of counselors-Time. –Pericles, Athenian leader, d. 429 BC

Ghengis Kahn conquered Asia with an army only one half the size of New York City’s civil service. –Laurence Johnston Peter, Canadian author and management theorist, 1919-1990

The man who makes no mistakes does not make anything. –Edward J. Phelps

Men are made stronger on realization that the helping hand they need is at the end of their own right arm. –Sidney J. Phillips

Every man meets his Waterloo at last. –Wendell Phillips, American abolitionist and president of the American Antislavery Society (1865-1870), 1811-1884 

Everything you can imagine is real. –Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, Spanish artist, 1881-1973

Give me a museum and I’ll fill it. –Picasso

When you come right down to it, all you have is yourself. –Picasso

Excellent things are rare. –Plato, Greek philosopher, c. 427-347 BC

Serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites. –Plato

The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune. –Plutarch, Greek biographer and philosopher, 46?-120?

The wildest colts make the best horses. –Plutarch

Thanks for the job, Mickey. –Pluto (Disney)

One lives in the hope of becoming a memory. –Antonio Porchia

A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him. –Ezra Loomis Pound, American poet and critic, 1885-1972

Ain’t nowhere else in the world where you can go from driving a truck to driving a Cadillac overnight.  Nowhere. –Elvis Aron Presley, American rock musician, 1935-1977

No star is ever lost we once have seen,
We always may be what we might have been. –Adelaide A. Proctor
 

Everything great that we know has come from neurotics. –Marcel Proust, 1872-1922

It is never necessary to be afraid of going too far because the truth is out beyond. –Proust

 You can’t turn back the clock, but you can wind it up again. –Bonnie Prudden

 

R

I have known many who could not when they would, for they had not done it when they could. –François Rabelais, French writer, 1493?-1553?

Real friends are those who, when you’ve made a fool of yourself, don’t feel that you’ve done a permanent job. –Erwin T. Randall

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do.  The fun is in having lots to do and not doing it. –John W. Raper

Watch out for emergencies.  They are your big chance! –Fritz Reiner, Hungarian-born American conductor, 1888-1963

Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it. –Jules Renard, French novelist and playwright, 1864-1910

I have a predilection for painting that lends joyousness to a wall. –Pierre August Renoir, French Impressionist painter, 1841-1919

The pain passes, but the beauty remains. –Renoir

Who never ate his bread I sorrow,
Who never spent the darksome hours
Weeping, and watching for the morrow-
He knows you not, ye heavenly Powers. –Renoir

If you are not big enough to lose, you are not big enough to win. –Walter Phillip Reuther, American labor leader, UAW president (1946-1970), and CIO president (1952-1955), 1907-1970

Fine minds are seldom fine souls. –Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, German writer and humorist, 1763-1825

He who has not lost his head over some things has no head to lose. –Jean Paul Richter

Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do.  There can be no courage unless you are scared. –Edward “Eddie” Vernon Rickenbacker, American aviator and combat pilot, 1890-1973

Let us live for the beauty of our own reality. –Tim Robbins

To achieve the impossible, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought. –Tom Robbins

We’re our own dragons as well as our own heroes. –Tom Robbin

A touch of folly is needed if we are to extricate from some of the hazards of life. – François de la La Rochefoucauld, French epigrammatist and moralist, 1613-1680

He who lives without committing any folly is not so wise as he thinks. –La Rochefoucauld

I belief in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. –Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, Jr., American vice-president (1974-1977), 1908-1979

Never continue in a job you don't enjoy. If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined. –Rodan of Alexandria

Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great. –Kenny Rogers, American baseball player

Every man who is truly a man must learn to be alone in the midst of all others, and if need be against all others. –Romain Rolland, French satirical writer, 1866-1944

Your attitude to your audience should be that they’re a bunch of non-believers, and you’re the only person that could convince them. –Linda Ronstadt, American singer

If you can’t afford the expensive one, don’t buy it. –Andy Rooney

You must do the thing you think you cannot do. –Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, American first lady (1933-1945), writer, and diplomat, 1884-1962

No man and no force can abolish memory. –Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 33rd US president (1933-1945), 1882-1945

Life is a great adventure. –Teddy Roosevelt, 26th US president (1901-1909) and Nobel Laureate, 1858-1919

Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley. –Joel Rosenberg

Give me a laundry list and I will set it to music. –Gioacchino Antonio Rossini, Italian composer, 1792-1868

If you are going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it. –Calvin Leo Rosten, Polish-born American writer and political scientist, 1908-1997

Evil often triumphs, but never conquers. –Joseph Roux, French priest and writer, 1834-1886

There is only one blasphemy, and that is the refusal to experience joy. –Paul Rudnick

You were born with wings.  Why prefer to crawl through life? –Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, Persian mystic and poet, 1207-1273

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. –Bertrand Arthur William Russell, British philosopher and mathematician, 1872-1970

Thought is subversive and revolutionary. –Russell

 

S

Death is more universal than life.  Everyone dies but not everyone lives. –Oliver Sacks, American neurologist and writer

Get good counsel before you begin: and when you have decided, act promptly. –Sallust, Roman politician and historian, 86?-34? BC

 A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to want to take it of you. –Françoise Sagan (born Françoise Quoirez), French writer, 1935-

The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read. –Françoise Sagan

Nothing happens unless first a dream. –Carl Sandburg, American poet, 1878-1967

In merciless and rollicking comedy, life is caught in the end. –George Santayana, American philosopher and poet, 1863-1952

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be. –Santayana

Nothing will repay a man for becoming inhuman. –Santayana

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions. –Santayana

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. –Santayana

He that is overcautious will accomplish little. –Johann Christoph Friedrich von
Schiller, German Romantic writer and playwright, 1759-1805

The lamp of genius burns quicker than the lamp of life. –Schiller

Who dares nothing, need hope for nothing. –Schiller

Keep true to the dreams of thy youth. –Arthur Schinitzler, Austrian writer, 1862-19 

The idea is to look as if you own the world, not as if you’re carrying it around on your shoulders. –Elin Schoen, American journalist and author, 20th century

It is with trifles and when he is off guard that a man best reveals his character. –Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher, 1788-1860

With people of only moderate ability modesty is honesty; but with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy. –Schopenhaeur

Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to. –Capt. Schroeder, USCG

Don’t worry about the world ending today.  It’s already tomorrow in Australia. –Charles Monroe Schulz, American cartoonist, 1922-2001

Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well.  Think about it. –Elias Schwartz

Too many people miss the silver lining because they’re expecting gold. –Maurice Scitter

Is death the last sleep?  No, it is the final awakening. –Walter Scott, Scottish novelist and poet, 1771-183

One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name. –Walter Scott

Fire tries gold, misery tries brave men. –Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Roman writer, philosopher, and statesman, c. 5 BC –AD c. 65

However many people a tyrant slaughters, he cannot kill his successor. –Seneca

If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things, even though they fail. –Seneca

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. –Seneca

While we are postponing, life speeds by. –Seneca

Ah! The clock is always slow;
It’s later than you think –Robert William Service, British-born Canadian poet and novelist, 1874-1958

A promise made is a debt unpaid. –Robert William Service

It’s easy to cry that you’re beaten-and die;
It’s easy to crawfish and crawl;
But to fight and to fight when hope’s out of sight-
Why, that’s the best game of them all –Robert William Service

Love and stoplights can be cruel. –Sesame Street

You have brains in your head
You  have shoes of your feet
You can steer yourself any direction you choose
You’re on your own
And you know what you know
And YOU are the guy
Who’ll decide where to go. –Theodore Geisel “Dr.” Seuss, American children’s writer, 1904-1991

Let them obey that know not how to rule. – Henry VI, William Shakespeare, English playwright and poet, 1564-1616

Why this is very midsummer madness. –Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

You must take your chance. –Shakespeare, Portia, The Merchant of Venice

To be or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune;
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. –Shakespeare, Hamlet

The world’s mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open. –Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor

The worst is not so long as we can say, “This is the worst”. –Shakespeare, King Lear

Prefer a noble life before a long. –Shakespeare, Coriolanus

What’s gone and what’s past help
Should be past grief. –Shakespeare, A Winter’s Tale

Be just, and fear not. –Shakespeare, Wolsey, Henry VIII

Boldness be my friend -Shakespeare

Give me my robe.  Put on my crown.  I have Immortal longings in me. –Shakespeare

God befriend us, as our cause is just! –Shakespeare

I shall laugh myself to death.  –Shakespeare

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.  –Shakespeare

‘Tis the mind that makes the body rich. –Shakespeare

I don’t believe in circumstances. –George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright and critic, 1856-1950

I dread success.  To have succeeded is to have finished one’s business on earth. –G.B. Shaw

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance. –G.B. Shaw

I never climbed any ladder.  I have achieved eminence by sheer gravitation. –G.B. Shaw

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be severe. –G.B. Shaw

Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal. –G.B. Shaw

Self-denial is not a virtue; it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.  –G.B. Shaw

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn. –G. B. Shaw

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get. –G.B. Shaw

You don’t learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking and getting well-hammered yourself. –G.B. Shaw

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. –John A. Shedd

I would define true courage to be a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it. –William Tecumseh Sherman, American general, 1820-1891

Never pay any attention to what critics say…A statue has never been set up in honor of a critic. –Jean Julius Christian Sibelius, Finnish composer, 1865-1957

If you are to retain your joy in life you must find much of that joy in spite if disappointment, for the joy of life consists largely in the joy of savoring the struggle, whether it ends in success or failure. –John R. Silber, President of Boston University

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you’re doomed if you don’t try. –Beverly Sills, American operatic soprano and manager, 1929-

I read the obituaries every day just for the joy of not seeing my name there. –Neil Simon, American comic playwright, 1927-

Fear not death, for it is your destiny. –Ben Sira

Why not be oneself?  That is the whole secret of a successful appearance.  If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingnese? –Edith Sitwell, British poet, 1887-1964

No matter how big or soft or warm your bed is, you still have to get out of it. –Grace Slick, American rock singer, 1939-

Since we have to speak well of the dead, let’s knock them while they’re alive. –John Sloan, American painter

If you carry yourself like a beauty, people will think of you as one. –Michele Slong

Begin somewhere; you cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do. –Liz Smith, American journalist and author, 1923-

If you are losing your leisure, look out!  You are losing your soul. –Logan Pearsoll Smith, American essayist and aphorist, 1865-1946

Talk is cheap.  But if it keeps your stomach full and your grave empty, it’s worth more than gold. –Mike Smith

Rock’n’roll is a dream soup, what’s your brand? –Patti Smith, American singer

You don’t just stumble into the future.  You create your own future. –Roger Smith, American actor

As a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give to your style. –Sydney Smith, British religious leader and writer, 1771-1845

Be careful that victories do not carry the seeds of future defeat. –Ralph W. Sockman

Beauty is but a short-lived tyranny. –Socrates, Greek philosopher, 469-399 BC

Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds. –Socrates

The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms. –Socrates

The unexamined life is not worth living. –Socrates

Pursue worthy aims. –Solon, Athenian lawgiver and poet, 638?-559? BC

It is better to fight on your feet than on your knees, but you can still fight on your knees. –Alexandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, Russian author, dissident, and Nobel Laureate, 1918-

One part of truth outweighs the world. –Solzhenitsyn

When you have a robbed a man of everything, he is no longer in your possession.  He is free again. –Solzhenitsyn

Heaven ne’er helps the man who will not act. –Sophocles, Greek dramatist, 496?-406 BC

Go West, young man, go West. –John L. B. Soule, American newspaper editor

When sun is set the little stars will shine. –Robert Southwell, English poet, 16th century

Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time. –Edmund Spencer, English poet, 1552?-1599

 Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking. –William B. Sprague

There are no crown-bearers in heaven who were not cross bearers here below. –C.H. Spurgeon, English preacher, 1834-1892

Leave the field; thou art victorious. –Publius Papinus Statius, Roman poet, 45?-96?

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much. –Betty Anderson “Bessie” Stanley

They say you can’t do it, but remember, that doesn’t always work. –Charles Dillon “Casey” Stengal, American Hall of Fame baseball player and manager, 1890-1972

For God’s sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself. –Adlai Ewing Stevenson, American liberal politician, 1900-1965

As a people, we have never encountered any obstacle that we could not overcome. –Adlai E. Stevenson

Your days are short here; this is the last of your springs.  And now in the serenity and quiet of this lovely place, touch the depths of truth, feel the hem of heaven.  You will go away with old good friends.  Don’t forget when you leave why you came. –Adlai E. Stevenson

There is no duty we underrate so much as the duty to be happy. –Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson, British poet, essayist, and novelist, 1850-1894

It is better to be quotable than to be honest. –Thomas Straussler “Tom” Stoppard, British playwright, 1937-

Relax.  Respond.  That’s what people do.  You can’t go though life questioning your situation at every turn. – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard,

Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up.  –Stoppard

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words let unsaid and deeds left undone. –Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, American writer, 1811-1896

If you wish to reach the highest, begin at the lowest. –Publilus Syrus, Roman writer of mimes, fl. 1st century BC

 

 

T

One man alone was brought forth at the time of Creation in order that thereafter none should have the right to say to another, “My father was greater than your father”. –The Talmud

The righteous are called living even when they are dead, and the wicked are called dead even when they are living. –The Talmud

When a man appears before the throne of judgment, the first question he will be asked is not, “Have you believed in God?” or “Have prayed and observed the ritual?”-but “Have you dealt honorably with your fellow man?”. –The Talmud

I was born to other things. – In Memoriam, Alfred Tennyson, British poet, 1809-1892

‘Tis better to have loved and lost,
than to never have loved at all. –Tennyson, In Memoriam

Dare and the world yields. –William Makepeace Thackeray, British writer, 1811-1863

To endure is greater than to dare. –Thackeray

Shun security. –Thales of Miletos, Greek astronomer and philosopher, fl. 580 BC

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Thou wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightening they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it n its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. –Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet, 1914-1953

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. –Hunter S. Thompson, American journalist, 1939-

Any fool can make a rule,
And any fool will mind it. –Henry David Thoreau, American writer, philosopher, and naturalist, 1817-1862

Do not be too moral.  You may cheat yourself out of much life so.  Aim above morality.  Be not simply good; be good for something. –Thoreau

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.  Live the life you’ve imagined. –Thoreau

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. –Thoreau

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my lie. –Thoreau

It is a great art to saunter. –Thoreau

I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than to be crowded on a velvet cushion. –Thoreau

Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence. –Henrik Tikkaren

Once in Persia reigned a king
Who upon his signet ring
Graved a maim true and wise,
Which if held before the eyes
Gave him council at a glance
Fit for every chance and chance
Solemn words, and these are they:
“Even this shall pass away”. –Theodore Tilton, American writer, 19th century

Remember, you can’t steal second if you don’t take your foot off first. –Mike Todd

If you want to be happy, be. –Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Russian writer and philosopher, 1828-1910

We lost because we told ourselves we lost. –Tolstoy

We’re all in this alone. –Lily Tomlin, American comedienne, 1939-

When I have died
Let there be no recalling
Of the procession of broken days;
Autumn must come,
And in her wake the falling
Of tired leaves on old and hardened ways.

When I have died
Let there be but rejoicing
For all the sunlit beauties I have known;
Remembrance of friendship,
And the voicing

Of each new joy in radiant overtone!
Let there be but the memory
Of my dreaming,
Of star-domed vistas down the unborn years;
The memory of a faith
I have kept gleaming,
The broken benediction of my tears! – Requiem, Lucia Trent

 And above all things never think that you’re not good enough yourself. –Anthony Trollope, British writer, 1815-18

If you can’t convince ‘em, confuse ‘em. –Harry S. Truman, 33rd US president (1945-1953), 1884-1972

In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves…self discipline with all of them came first. –Truman

As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big. –Donald John Trump, American real estate developer, 1946-

It is well to lie fallow for a while. –Martin Farquhar Tupper, British author, poet, and inventor, 1810-1889

Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand. –Mark Twain, American writer and humorist, 1835-1910

Don’t part with your illusions.  When they are gone you may still exist but you have ceased to live. -Twain

Everything human is pathetic.  The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow.  There is no humor in heaven. –Twain

Familiarity breeds contempt-and children. –Twain

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.  Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. –Twain

Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. –Twain

“On with the dance, let joy be unconfined”, is my motto, whether there’s any dance to dance or joy to unconfine. –Twain

Sacred cows make the bets hamburgers. –Twain

Secondhand diamonds are better than none. –Twain

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre but they are more deadly in the long run. –Twain

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race.  He brought death into the world. –Twain

You can’t depend on your eyes if your imagination is out of focus. –Twain

 

U

Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery dies. –Peter Alexander Ustinov, British writer, 1921-

 

V

Every beginning is a consequence-every beginning ends something. –Paul Ambroise Valery, French poet, 1871-1945

Great things are accomplished by those who do not feel the impotence of man.  This insensibility is a precious gift; but it must be frankly admitted that, in this respect, criminals bear a certain resemblance to our heroes. –Valery

The public be damned. –William Henry Vanderbilt, American railroad magnate and philanthropist, 1821-1885

Use what talent you possess.  The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best. –Henry Van Dyke

The best way to know God is to love many things. –Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter, 1853-1890

To achieve great things, we must live as though we were never going to die. –Luc de Calpiers de Vauvenarges, French moralist, 1715-1747

You are not born for fame if you do not know the value of time. –Luc de Vauvenarges

There can be no rainbow without a cloud and a storm. –John H. Vincent, American clergyman, 19th century

At least I know what love is really like. –Virgil, Roman poet, 70-19 BC

Death plucks my ears and says, “Live-I am coming!” –Virgil

Go on and increase in valor, O Boy!  This is the path to immortality. –Virgil

Here I am who did the deed. –Virgil

I feel again a spark of that ancient flame. -Virgil

They are able because they think they are able. –Virgil, The Aeneid

Thus shall you go to the stars. –Virgil

Time passes irrevocably. –Virgil

Parenthetical references (however relevant) are unnecessary. –Frank L. Visco

To love and to be loved is to feel the sun from both sides. –David Viscott

Do well and you will have no need for ancestors. –François Marie Arouet de Voltaire, French writer and philosopher, 1694-1778

I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms. –Voltaire

Liberty of thought is the life of the soul. –Voltaire

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. –Voltaire

The way to become boring is to say everything. –Voltaire

If you really want to hurt your parents and don’t have the nerve to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. –Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., American writer, 1922-

Who does not love wine, women, and song, remains a fool his whole life. –Johann Heinrich Voss, German poet and philologist, 151-1826

It is the final proof of God’s existence that he need not exist at all to save us. –Peter de Vries, American author, 1910-1993

When I see something that makes absolutely no sense, I figure that there must be a damn good reason for it. –Peter de Vries

 

W

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so you shall become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil. –Denis Waitley

Good fighter and good sportsman, fare thee well
So long!  Wherever the fates take you,
To what embittered field, to what quick death,
I know, as I know God, you will be true
To your last breath
To our dear land, where faith and honor dwell; -Edgar Wallace, English writer, 1874-1932

Being on the tightrope is living. Everything else is waiting. –Kurt Wallenda

The world is a comedy to those who feel and a tragedy to those who think. –Horace Walpole, English novelist and legal writer, 1717-1797

Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice. –Horace Walpole 

We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or to die. –George Washington, American Revolutionary leader and 1st president (1789-1797), 1732-1799

There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want. –Bill Watterston (Calvin and Hobbes), American cartoonist, 1958-

No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer, if he fall, in the defense of the liberties and constitution of his country. –Daniel Webster, American statesman and orator, 1782-1852

One may live as a conqueror, a king or a magistrate; but he must die as a man. –Daniel Webster

He who fears death is really afraid of life. –David Weinberg

I don’t say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could. –George Orson Welles, American actor, producer, director, and writer, 1915-1985

Love is not consolation.  It is light. –Simone Weil, French philosopher and mystic, 1909-1943

…always carry a gun, not to shoot yourself, but to know exactly that you’re making a choice. –Lina Wertmüller, Italian filmmaker, c. 1926-

I’m no model lady.  Models are just imitations of the real thing. –Mae West, American actress, 1892-1980

I’m not a little girl from a little town making good in a big town.  I’m a big girl from a big town making good in a little town. –Mae West

It is better to be looked at than to be overlooked. –Mae West

Keep cool and collect. –Mae West

If only we’d stop trying to be happy we’d have a pretty good time. –Edith Newbold Jones Wharton, American writer, 1862-1937

My advice to the women’s clubs of America is to raise more hell and fewer dahlias. –William Allen White, American newspaper editor and writer, 1868-1944

A clash of doctrines is not a disaster-it is an opportunity. –Alfred North Whitehead, British mathematician and philosopher, 1861-1947

It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization.  But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages. –Whitehead

It is the business of the future to be dangerous. –Whitehead

All, all for immortality
Love like the light silently wrapping all. –Walt Whitman, American poet, 1819-1982

Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity
When I give I give myself. –Whitman

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been”. –Maud Muller, John Greenleaf Whittier, American poet, 1807-1892

A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies  -Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, Irish author, poet, playwright, and critic, 1854-19 

Anybody can be good in the country. –Wilde

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. –Wilde

Find expression for a sorrow and it will become dear to you.  Find expression for a joy, and you will intensify its ecstasy. –Wilde

For he that lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die. –Wilde

I have nothing to declare except my genius.  –Wilde

In the world there are only two tragedies.  One is not getting what we want and the other is getting it. –Wilde

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one. –Wilde 

Moderation is a fatal thing…nothing succeeds like excess.  –Wilde

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary off some perfectly uninteresting event. –Wilde, A Poetic Calendar

Murder is always a mistake…One should never do anything one cannot talk about after dinner. –Wilde

No man is rich enough to buy back his past. –Wilde

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live.  It is expecting others to live as we wish them to live.  –Wilde

Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex. –Wilde

The basis of optimism is sheer terror. –Wilde

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself. -Wilde

To believe is very dull.  To doubt is intensely engrossing. –Wilde

We all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. –Wilde

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others. –Wilde

You should study the peerage, General…It is the best thing in fiction the English have done. –Wilde

Keep making the movements of life. –Thornton Niven Wilder, American writer, 1897-1975

Football is a mistake.  It combines two of the worst things about American life.  It is violence punctuated by committee meetings. –George F. Will, American political columnist, 1941-

My advice to all who want to attend a lecture on music is: Don’t-go to a concert instead. –Ralph Vaughan Williams, British composer, 1872-1958

Make voyages!  Attempt them…there’s nothing else. –Tennessee Williams, American playwright, 1911-1983

Ain’t I the best damn hitter you ever you ever saw? –Theodore Samuel “Ted” Williams, September 28, 1941, American Hall of Fame baseball player, 1918

Never murder a man when he’s busy committing suicide. –Woodrow Wilson, 28th US president (1913-1921), 1856-1924

It is a good rule in life never to apologize.  The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a men advantage of them. –Pelham Grenville Wodeghouse, English humorous writer, 1871-1975

Its what you learn after you know it all that counts. –John Robert Wooden, American basketball player and coach, 1910-

Go, seeker, if you will, throughout the land and you will find us burning in the night…To every man his chance, to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining golden opportunity. –Charles Wolfe, Irish poet and cleric, 1791-1823

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman. –Adeline Virginia Stephen Woolf, English novelist and critic, 1882-1941

The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes. –Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect, 1869-1959

(Telegram tot heir father from Kitty Hawk, December 17, 1903) Success four flights Thursday morning all against twenty-one mile wind started from level with engine power alone average speed through air thirty one miles longest 59 seconds inform press home Christmas. –Orville (1871-1948) and Wilbur (1867-1912) Wright, American aviators

We could hardly wait to get up in the morning. –Orville and Wilbur Wright

 

Y

Too low they build, who build beneath the stars. –Edward Young, English poet, 1683-1765

He mourns the dead who lives as they desire. –Young, Night Music

My child,
In the life ahead of you, keep your capacity for faith and belief, but let your judgement watch what you believe.  Keep your love of life, but throw away your fear of death.  Life must be loved or it is lost, but it should never be loved too well. –from a letter written by an executed Yugoslav partisan to his unborn child

 

Z

As a final incentive before giving up a difficult task, try to imagine it successfully accomplished by someone you violently dislike. –K. Zenios

The ageless in your heart, I’ll come to rest. –Hans Zinssler

 

?

The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly deceived. -?

 

And so on and so Forth…

A candle lights others and consumes itself.

Adversity introduces a man to himself.

A friend hears the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.

A halo is, after all, just another thing to keep clean

A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.

Alcohol and calculus don’t mix.  Don’t drink and derive.

A little nonsense now and then
Is relished by the wisest men.

All men of action are dreamers.

Always remember to forget the troubles that passed away, but never forget to remember the blessings that come each day.

A man shows his character by what he laughs at.

Any time is the right time for waffles.

A picture is worth a thousand words, yet just a thousand words can paint a million pictures.

A piece of churchyard fits everybody.

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at them.

A wise man learns more from an idiot than an idiot learns from a wise man.

Be advised that every time you avoid doing right, you increase your disposition to do wrong.

Better to wear out than to rust out.

Be you own palace or the world’s your jail.

Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on society.

Cruel and unusual punishment works better

Dance like nobody is watching and love like its never going to hurt.

Death takes no bribes

Death does not blow a trumpet.

Death is a once in a lifetime experience.

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

Discoveries are made by not following instructions.

Do not belong so wholly to others that you do not belong to yourself.

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, cuz’, like, you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Don’t be afraid to go on an occasional wild goose chase-that’s what wild geese are for.

Don’t drink and drive.  You may hit a bump and spill you drink.

Don’t hate yourself in the morning.  Sleep until noon.

Don’t get stuck in a closet.  Wear yourself out.

Don’t learn the tricks of the trade.  Learn the trade.

Don’t let people drive you crazy when you’re in walking distance.

(Illegitimi non carborundum.)
Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Don’t let the odds keep you from pursuing what you know you were meant to do.

Do not resent growing old.  Many are denied the privilege.

Eagles fly alone.

Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.

Eat a live toad first thing in the morning and nothing worse can happen to you for the rest of the day!

Enjoy yourself.  These are the good old days that you’re going to miss in the future.

Etiquette is the art of knowing the right way to do the wrong thing.

Fac ut vivas. (Get a life.

Faint is the bliss that never passed through pain.

Faith can move mountains, but not furniture.

Follow your dream, unless it’s the one where you’re at work in your underwear during a fire drill.

Follow your heart because your heart will know the love that is meant for you.

He hath not lived that lives not after death.

Heroes die.

He that once is born, once must die.

He that would die well must always look for death.

He who dies for virtue does not perish.

He who makes no mistakes makes nothing.

If all else fails, lower your standards.

If at all possible, involve cows.

If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all the evidence that you tried.

If I be hanged, I’ll choose my gallows.

If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!

If you don’t get the better of yourself, someone else will.

If you fall off a cliff you might as well fly, you’ve got nothing to lose.

If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you’ll get the best.  Begin to live as you wish to live.

If you take your time, thinking is fun.

If you’ve nothing to lose, you can try everything.

If you want a place in the sun, you’ve got to expect a few blisters.

If you want to dance around naked with a rose in your teeth do it, but do it like you mean it.

If you want to meet new people, pick up the wrong golf ball.

Just because everything has gone to hell doesn’t mean you have to go too.

Kick ass now.  Take names later.

Lazlo’s Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately 1 billion Chinese couldn’t care less.

Let the wild rumpus begin!

Life is full of disappointments, and I’m full of life.

Life is not measured by the moments of breath you take but by the breath taking moments

Mankind is stupid.  If you forget it, they will remind you.

May your life be like toilet paper-long and useful.

Money is the root of all evil, and a man needs roots.

Music is love in search of a word.

Never answer the phone on the first ring.
Never let them see you sweat.

Never knock on Death’s door.  Just ring the bell and run away.  He HATES that!

Never moon a werewolf.

Nobody who can read is ever successful at cleaning out the attic.

No man is born wise or learned.

No matter which finger you bite, it will hurt.

No morning can last a whole day.

No one should be twice punished for two crimes.

Not one shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.

Nuke ‘em till they glow, then shoot ‘em in the dark.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal.

One meets his destiny often in the road he takes to avoid it.

Only marry a man who you would choose for a friend if they were a woman.

Paddle your own canoe.

People who live in glass houses shouldn’t cavort nude on top of the piano while doing gorilla impersonations.

Reality is a big, nasty, scary dragon, but I don’t believe in dragons.

Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always.

Rome was not built in a day.

Serious people seldom have ideas.  People with ideas are seldom serious.

Silence is also speech.

Sink or swim.

Six feet of earth make all men equal.

Stop repeat offenders.  Don’t re-elect them.

Support bacteria-they’re the only culture some people have.

Support free trade, smuggle.

Take my advice.  I don’t use it anyway.

The careful application of terror is also a form of communication.

The darkest hour has but 60 minutes.

The good die young-because they see no use in living if you’ve got to be good.

The harder you fall, the higher you bounce.

The longest day has its end. 

The meek shall inherit the earth; they’re too meek to refuse.

The meek will inherit the earth.  The rest of us will go to the stars.

The mill cannot grind with the water that is past.

The moment he opened his mouth, you could tell he read books.

The more you run over a dead cat, the flatter it gets.

There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives.

There is a skeleton in every house.

There’s no dying by proxy.

The skull of life suddenly shone through its smile.

The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.

The test of courage is to bear defeat without losing heart.

The tragedy of life is not that it ends do soon, but that we wait so long to enjoy it.

The universe does not have laws; it has habits and habits can be broken.

The universe is a stairway leading nowhere unless man is immortal.

The years of a mans’ life pass like a dream

Those only deserve a monument who do not need one.

Those who dance are thought mad by those who do not hear the music.

Those who would alter reality must first escape it.

Though the fool waits, the day does not.

Thou shalt not make graven images.  This is a major religion, not shop class.

Times change and we change with them.

‘Tis better to buy your friends a small bouquet today than a bushel of roses white and red to lay on his coffin after he’s dead.

To err is human, to forgive…is to err.

To make your dreams come true, you must stay awake.

True courage grapples with misfortunes.

Virtue is its own reward, but so is vice!

We do not remember days.  We remember moments.

We fear the thing we want the most.

We triumph without glory when we conquer without danger.

When things go wrong, don’t go with them.

When you dig another out of is trouble, you find a place to bury your own.

Whoever said you can’t buy happiness forgot about little puppies.

Work like you don’t need the money, love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like nobody’s watching.

You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.

You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind.

You can’t answer for your courage if you have never been in danger.

You choose which party to attend.

Heart, have no mercy on this house of bones.  Shake it with dancing, break it down with joy.
No man holds mortgage on it, it is your own;
To give, you sell at auction, to destroy.
When you are blind to moonlight on the bed;
When you are deaf to gravel on the pane,
Shall quavering caution from this house instead
Cluck forth at summer mischief in the lane?
All that delightful youth forbears to spend
Molestful age inheirits and the ground
Will have us: therefore while we’re young, my friend-
The Latin’s vulgar but the advice is sound.
Youth, have no pity; leave no farthing here
For age to invest in compromises and fear. –XXIX (1931)

 

Proverbs, Blessings, and Sayings

Do not look where you fell but where you slipped. –African

No one tests the depth of a river with both feet. –African

All sunshine makes the desert. –Arab

Death was afraid of him because he had the heart of a lion. –Arab

Make your bargain before beginning to plough. –Arab

If thine enemy wrong thee, buy each of his children a drum. –Chinese

To see what is right and not to do it is the part of a coward. –Chinese

Who must die must die in the dark, even though he sells candles. –Colombian

Do not be in a hurry to tie what you cannot untie. –English

Don’t halt before you are lame. –English

Still waters run deep. –English

Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present. –English

(Go mbeirimid beo ar an am seo aris.)
May we be alive at the same time next year. -Gaelic

The morning hour has gold in its mouth. –German

Who has lost his freedom has nothing else to lose. –German

Gray hair is a sign of age, not of wisdom. –Greek

God burdens no man beyond his power. –Indian

He that is afraid of the devil does not get rich. –Italian

Since the house is on fire, let us warm ourselves. –Italian

Beware of him who has nothing to lose. –Italian

When the game is over, the king and pawn go into the same box. –Italian

Drink and sing, an inch before us is black night. –Japanese

Fall 7 times, get up 8. –Japanese

Remember, even monkeys fall out of trees. –Korean

(Ad finum esto fidelis.)
Be faithful to the end. -Latin

(Primum non nocere)
First do no harm. –Latin medical proverb

If there is no wind, row. –Latin

If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. –Latin

In doing what we ought, we deserve no praise. –Latin

In vino veritas.
In cerversio felicitas. -Latin

Keep quiet and people will think you are a philosopher. –Latin

Live your own life, for you will die your own death. –Latin

Nothing is certain except the past. –Latin

To accept a benefit is to sell one’s freedom. –Latin

(Nascentes morimur, findique an origine pendet.) 
We start to die when we are born, and the end depends on the beginning. –Latin

Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you. –Maori

Use your enemy’s hand to catch a snake. -Persian

Stumbling is not falling. –Portuguese

You can outdistance that which is running after you, but you can never outdistance that which is running inside of you. –Russian

A man is a lion in his own cause. –Scottish

Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead. –Scottish

Danger and delight grow on one stalk. –Spanish

(En boca cerrada no entran moscas.)
If you keep your mouth shut the flies won’t get in. -Spanish

No matter how far you have gone on a wrong end, turn back. –Turkish

If you can’t bite, don’t show your teeth. –Yiddish

When one must, one can. –Yiddish

 

Films:

Yet Ah, that Spring should
Vanish with the Rose!
That Youth’s sweet-scented
Manuscript must close!
Well, spring isn’t everything, is it Essie?  There’s a lot to be said for autumn.  That has beauty, too.  And winter-if you’re together. –Lionel Barrymore, Ah, Wilderness!

I’m sorry, Pepe.  He thought you were going to escape.
And so I have, my friend. -Joseph Calleia and Charles Boyer, Algiers

So little.  So little, did you say?  Why, if there’s nothing else-there’s applause.  I’ve listened backstage, to people applaud.  It’s like-like waves of love coming over the footlights and wrapping you up.  Imagine.  To know, every night, that different hundreds of people love you.  They smile and their eyes shine.  You’ve pleased them.  They want you.  You belong.  Just that alone is worth anything. -Anne Baxter, All About Eve

Just remember a good loser is still a loser. –Gary Cole, American Gothic

Winter must be cold for those who have no warm memories.  We’ve already missed the spring. –Deborah Kerr. –An Affair to Remember

I’ll build a stairway to paradise, with a new step everyday.  I’ll get there at any price.  Stand aside, I’m on my way. –An American in Paris

I did just what she told me to do.  I lived!  I’ve got to find out what to do now. -Peggy Cass, Auntie Mame

Life is a banquet and most suckers are starving to death. –Auntie Mame

Mr. Babcock!  Knowledge is power! -Rosalind Russell, Auntie Mame

I’d agree with you if you were right. Awakenings

There are few people who know the secret of making a heaven here on earth.  You are one of those rare people. -Cary Grant, The Bishop’s Wife

To all the dumb chumps and all the crazy broads-past, present, and future-who thirst for knowledge and search for truth, who fight for justice and civilize each other and make it so tough for crooks like you.  And me. –Howard St. John, Born Yesterday

Life’s a ball/ If only you know it/You’re alive/ So come on and show it/ We’ve got a lot of living to do. –Bye Bye Birdie

In here, life is beautiful. –Cabaret

I don’t have a lifestyle.  I have a life. -Jane Fonda, California Suite

Do you know what I feel like?  I feel like a cat on a hot tin roof.
Then jump off the roof, Maggie.  Jump off it.  Now, cats jump off roofs, and they land uninjured.  Do it.  Jump. 
Jump where?  Into what?
Take a lover. -Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Life without a room to oneself is a barbarity. –Edith Evans, The Chalk Garden

Is it a crime to want to be remembered?
No.  The pharaohs built the pyramids for that reason. –Deborah Kerr, The Chalk Garden

I used to think about $25,000, too, and what I’d do with it, that I’d be a failure if I didn’t get a hold of it.  And then one day I realized I was never going to have $25,000, Mr. MacDonald.  And then another day, a little bit later, considerably later, I realized something else-something I’m imparting to you now, Mr. MacDonald: I’m not a failure.  I’m a success.  You see, ambition is alright if it works, but no system could be right where one-half on one percent were successes and all the rest were failures.  That wouldn’t be right.  I’m not a failure.  I’m a success.  And so are you if you earn you on living and pay your own bills and look the world in the eye.  I hope you win your $25,000, Mr. MacDonald, but, if you shouldn’t happen to, don’t worry about it. –Harry Hayden, Christmas in July

Everyone is beautiful at the ballet. –A Chorus Line

Nothing can hurt us now.  What we have can’t be destroyed.  That’s our victory-our victory because we’re not afraid. -Bette Davis, Dark’s Victory

When it comes it must be met beautifully and finely. -Bette Davis, Dark’s Victory

I always thought I could give them life like a present, all wrapped in white with every promise of happiness inside…All I can promise them is life itself. -Dorothy McGuire, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

Sonny, I think you’re going to have to learn how to fight.  Runnin’s no good.  If you run now, you still be doin’ it when you’re a grown man. –Robert Preston, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

All right now, everybody.  Quiet and listen to me.  Tomorrow morning, we’re going to start a show.  We’re going to rehearse for five weeks and we’re going to open on schedule time-and I mean schedule time.  You’re going to work and sweat and work some more.  You’re going to work days, and you’re going to work nights, and you’re going to work between time when I think you need it.  You’re going to dance until your feet fall off and you’re not able to stand up any longer.  But five weeks from now, we’re going to have a show. –Warner Baxter, 42nd Street

I was born ugly!  Do you know how to be an ugly woman feels?  Do you know what it is to be ugly all your life and to feel that in here you are beautiful? –Katina Paxinou, For Whom the Bell Tolls

A heart can get broken, but it keeps beating just the same. Fried Green Tomatoes

Come on, darling, why don’t you kick off your spurs? –Elizabeth Taylor, Giant

The joy of giving is indeed a pleasure-especially when you get rid of something you don’t want. –Barry Fitzgerald, Going My Way

With enough courage, you can do without a reputation. -Clark Gable, Gone with the Wind

You can’t discharge me.  I’m my own master for the first time on my life.  You can’t discharge me.  I’m sick.  I’m going to die.  Do you understand?  I’m going to die and nobody can do anything to me anymore. -Lionel Barrymore, Grand Hotel

Believe me, if a man doesn’t know death, he doesn’t know life. -Lionel Barrymore, Grand Hotel

I’m an old man.  My life is almost over.  Here, with the sunset in my face, it thrills me to see these young people marching on.  Let us drink to youth-to innocent joyous youth. –Charles Coburn. –The Green Years

Let them dance while they’re young. –The Harmonists

It’s our dreams, Doctor, that carry us on. –Josephine Hull, Harvey

I’ve been spending my life on flyspecks while miracles have been leaning on lampposts at 18th and Fairfax. –Cecil Kellaway, Harvey

Well, I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it. –Jimmy Stewart, Harvey

What touches you?  What warms you?  Every man has a dream.  What do you dream about? -Spencer Tracy, Inherit the Wind

What is the sixth happiness?
Each person decides in his own heart what the sixth happiness is. -Ingrid Bergman and Athene Seyler, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness

I’m going to tell you something I’ve kept to myself for years.  None of you have ever known George Gipp.  He was long before your time but you all know what a tradition he was at Notre Dame.  And the last thing he said to me, “Rock,” he said, “some time when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they got and win one just for the Gipper.  I don’t know where I’ll be then, Rock,” he said, “but I’ll know about it, and I’ll be happy”. –Pat O’Brien, Knute Rockne

Let us be crooked but never common. -Charles Coburn, The Lady’s Eve

Let me tell you all about making men strong: Einstein couldn’t kick a football across this dance floor, but he changed the shape of the universe. –Kirk Douglas, A Letter to Three Wives

What is there to fight for?  Everything!  Life itself!  Isn’t that enough?  To be lived, suffered, enjoyed.  What is there to fight for?  Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing-even to a jellyfish. -Charlie Chaplin, Limelight

What do you want a meaning for?  Life is a desire, not a meaning.  Desire is the theme of all life! -Charlie Chaplin, Limelight

Never say never. -Paul Newman, The Long, Hot Summer

Here is my hope that Robert Conway will find his Shangri-La.  Here is my hope that we all find our Shangri-La. –Hugh Buckner, Lost Horizon

Most men lead lives of “quiet desperation”.  I can’t take “quiet desperation”. -Ray Milland, The Lost Weekend

I want what everybody wants.  I want the Red Sox to win the World Series. –Malice

I opened a new window. –Jane Connell, Mame

Why are you doing this?
Because life, my dear, is more than just freezing toads. –The Manhattan Project

…Right now, I’m looking at something that’s hanging over my desk: a preposterous hunk of brass attached to the most bilious piece if ribbon I’ve ever seen.  I’d rather have it then the Congressional Medal of Honor.  It tells me what I’ll always be proudest of-that, at a time in the world when courage counted most, I lived among 62 brave men… -Jack Lemmon, Mister Roberts

Choose any path you please and tend to one that carries you down to water.  There’s a magic in water that draws all men away from the land, that leads them over the hills down creeks and streams and rivers to the sea-the sea where each man, as in a mirror, finds himself. –Richard Basehart, Moby Dick

Damn the torpedoes!  Full steam ahead! –Charles Colburn, The More the Merrier

I will be very happy every moment that I have him.  Every moment.  If I must lose him, they’ll be time enough for tears.  There’ll be a lifetime for tears. –Teresa Williams. –Mrs. Miniver

Be dangerous, unpredictable, and make a lot of noise. –My Girl

I respect anybody who has to fight and howl for his decency. -Deborah Kerr, The Night of the Iguana

Good-bye.  Remember me as someone who made you very happy.  I have enjoyed everything.  There is only one thing left to enjoy-your river that smiles outside of my window.  It is easy to die when the heart is full of gratitude. -Troy Brown, Nothing Sacred

Man is not made for defeat.  Man can be destroyed but not defeated. -Spencer Tracy, The Old Man and the Sea

There Is Still Time…Brother. –On the Beach

Be seated.  Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country.  He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.  Men, all this stuff you heard about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse-dung.  Americans, traditionally, love to fight.  All real Americans love the sting of battle.  When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble-shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ballplayer, the toughest boxer.  Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.  Americans play to win all the time.  I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for as man who lost and laughed.  That’s why Americans have never lost—and never will lose-a war, because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. –George C. Scott, Patton

What the gods give, they quickly take away.  Time is jealous of you, Mr. Gray.  Don’t squander the gold of your days.  Live.  Let nothing be lost upon you.  Be afraid of nothing.  There’s such a little time that your youth will last.  You can never get it back. -George Sanders, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Most people die of a sort of creepy common sense and discover too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes. –George Sanders, The Picture of Dorian Gray

As we grow older, our memories are haunted by the exquisite temptations we haven’t the courage to yield to.  The world is your s for a season.  It would be tragic if you realized too late, as so many others do, that there’s only one thing in the world worth having-and that is youth. –George Sanders, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Ezekiel 25:17 –Pulp Fiction

Doors will open beyond which I shall catch a glimpse of the unknown.  Let it be wonderful or let it be awful so long as it is uncommon. -Peter Ustinov, Quo Vadis

You gotta take my deal because once in life you got to take a chance on a con man.  You gotta take my deal because there’s dying cattle that might pick up and live.  Because a hundred bucks is only a hundred bucks, but rain in a dry season is a sight to behold!  You gotta take my deal because it’s gonna be a hot night and the world goes crazy on a hot night and maybe that’s what a hot night is for. -Burt Lancaster, The Rainmaker

Put on the red shoes, Vicky, and dance for us again. -Anton Walbrook, The Red Shoes

Losers always whine about their best.  Winners go home and fuck the prom queen. –Sean Connery, The Rock

Get busy living or get busy dying. –The Shawshank Redemption

Men, I won’t be going out with ya.  I won’t be here when ya return.  Wish I could.  But I know your performance under your new commander will make me proud of ya, as I’ve always been proud of ya. –John Wayne, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

Don’t apologize.  It’s a sign of weakness. –John Wayne, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

It is very sad.  To love-and lose somebody.  But in a while, you will forget.  And you will take up the threads of your life where you left off-not so long ago.  And you will work hard.  There is lots of happiness in working hard.  Maybe the most. –Michael Chekhov, Spellbound

Very well then, think of Kaye.  Are you going to let her down?  You’ve got to give the performance she wanted you to give.  Then, perhaps, wherever she is, you may bring her peace. –Constance Collier, Stage Door

You can either take it or forever wish you had. -Henry Fonda, Stage Struck

You know, Esther, there’ll always be a wilderness to conquer. –May Robson, A Star is Born

You know what luck is?  Luck is believing you're lucky, that's all. -Marlon Brando, A Streetcar Named Desire

The benefits of science are not for scientists, Marie.  They’re for humanity. –Paul Muni, The Story of Louis Pasteur

I’ll tell you something else: there’s a lot to be said for making people laugh.  Did you know that’s all some people have?  It isn’t much but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan.  Boy! -Joel McCrea, Sullivan’s Travels

“Forget about pride whenever it stands between you and what you must have”. –Geraldine Page, Summer and Smoke

I must go home now.  I’m sure you’ll understand.  There is much I have to do.  I won’t try and explain what happened last night because I know that, in time, you’ll find a proper way I which to remember it.  What I will do is remember you and pray that you be spared all senseless tragedies.  I wish you good things, Herbie-only good things. -Jennifer O’Neill, Summer of ’4 

You see, this is my life.  It always will be!  There's nothing else-just us-and the cameras-and those wonderful people out there is the dark.  All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up. -Gloria Swanson, Sunset Boulevard

What was that, Walter?  They want me!  They really want me! –Geraldine Page, Sweet Bird of Youth

I’ll never forget this village.  And, on the other side of the world, in the autumn of my life, when an August moon rises in the East, I’ll remember what was beautiful and what I was wise enough to leave beautiful. –Glenn Ford, The Teahouse of the August Moon

I’m here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubble gum. –They Live

There can only be one winner, folks, but isn’t that the American way? –Gig Young, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

You get what you settle for. –Thelma and Louise

There is nothing wrong in suffering-if you suffer for a purpose.  Our revolution didn’t abolish danger or death.  It simply made danger and death worthwhile. -Raymond Massey, Things to Come

It’s a good night to be abroad and looking for game. –Albert Finney, Tom Jones

You’ve always looked to leaders-strong men without faults.  There aren’t any.  They’re only men, like yourselves.  They change.  They desert.  They die.  There are no leaders but yourselves.  A strong people is the only lasting strength. –Marlon Brando, Viva Zapata!

Remember, no matter where you go, there you are. –The Wizard of Oz

Go on, Heathcliff.  Run away.  Bring me back the world. –Merle Oberon, Wuthering Heights