The problem with a page of quotes is that these are all out of context. I can only vouch for myself: I found these quotes profound at the time I read them. Whether they are worthwhile in this format is a good question. Oh, and they're in alphabetical order of whoever said the note. (I'm thinking about arranging them thematically, but not yet.)
"This omnividence, as you call it--it is not a common word in Spaceland--does it make you more just, more merciful, less selfish, more loving? Not in the least. Then how does it make you more divine?"
"It is horrifying that we have to fight our government to save the environment."
"You live and learn. At any rate, you live."
"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"There is no greater sorrow than to remember the happy time when one is miserable."
"Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered."
"All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation."
"Be joyful though you have considered all the facts."
"To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely."
"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."
"Football is popular because stupidity is popular."
"However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?"
"Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others."
"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."
"The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive."
"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people."
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
"In particular it is what might be called 'comparative originality' that is so awful. If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn, and were then to lay his own garden diagonally from one corner to the other, that man's soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left."
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."
"God is at home; it's we who have gone out for a walk."
"You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion."
"If the only prayer you say in your life is 'thank you', that would suffice."
"One must not always think so much about what one should do, but rather what one should be. Our works do not ennoble us; but we must ennoble our works."
"Translation is the art of failure."
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."
"The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason."
"Forget Spanish. There's nothing in that language worth reading except Don Quixote, and a quick listen to the CD of Man of La Mancha will take care of that. There was a poet named Garcia Lorca, but I'd leave him on the intellectual back burner if I were you. As for everyone's speaking it, what twaddle! Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to? The help? Your leaf blower? Study French or German, where there are at least a few books worth reading, or, if you're American, try English."
"There never was a good war or a bad peace."
"...but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use."
"I never met a man so stupid I could not learn something from him."
"Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effects of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites."
"There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive."
"He who praises everybody praises nobody."
"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."
"What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?"
"Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose."
"Going to church no more makes you a Christian than standing in a garage makes you a car."
"It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey."
"Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it."
"Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor."
"The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well."
"To hear, one must be silent."
"Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment."
"Perfect humility dispenses with modesty."
"Courtship is the time for sowing those seeds which will grow up ten years into domestic hatred."
"We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship."
"There is no other way of guarding oneself against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth; but when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect."
"A leader who doesn't hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader."
"Don't be humble. You're not that great."
"Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it."
"The integrity of an artist lifts a man above the level of the world without delivering him from it."
"When ambition ends, happiness begins."
"The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little."
"Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form."
"You must be patient, you must wait for the eye of the soul to be formed in you. Religious truth is reached, not by reasoning, but by an inward perception. Anyone can reason; only disciplined, educated, formed minds can perceive."
"Never get so attached to a poem that you forget truth that lacks lyricism."
"The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced, and the art which has grown in her womb."
"It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it."
"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral."
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."
"Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit."
"He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches"
"The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is."
"In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness."
"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
"I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves."
"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."
"He who lives only to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies."
"Reason without goodness is not reason, and goodness without reason is not goodness."
"Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it."
"Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more."
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
"History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices."
"I used to hate writing assignments, but now I enjoy them. I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!"
"It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning."
"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault."
"We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely."
"An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it."
"After ecstasy, the laundry."
-Zen proverb