We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for. 

~ Marie Ebner von Eschenbach, writer (1830-1916)

When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders. 

~ Rabindranath Tagore, poet, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941)

Walking is man's best medicine. 

~ Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine (460-377 BCE)

Anger as soon as fed is dead , 'Tis starving makes it fat. 

~ Emily Dickinson, poet (1830-1886)

Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some, and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. 

~ Robert Fulghum, author (b. 1937)

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. 

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet (1807-1882) 

My soul is a broken field, plowed by pain. 

~ Sara Teasdale, poet (1884-1933) 

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf and take an insect view of its plain. 

~ Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools. 

~ Spanish proverb

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

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832)

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

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832)

If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him. 

~ Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626) 

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does. 

~ Josh Billings, columnist and humorist (1818-1885) 

Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way.

~ E.L. Doctorow, writer (b. 1931)

One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it.

~ Martin Luther King Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968)

No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.

~ Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997)

That sorrow which is the harbinger of joy is preferable to the joy which is followed by sorrow. 

~ Saadi, poet (c.1213-1291) 

Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it. 

~ Milan Kundera, novelist, playwright, and poet (b.1929)

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry. 

~ Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (1737-1809)

Nothing ruins a face so fast as double-dealing. Your face telling one story to the world. Your heart yanking your face to pieces, trying to let the truth be known. 

~ Jessamyn West, novelist (1902-1984)

When money speaks, the truth keeps silent. 

~ Russian proverb

Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences. 

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, essayist, and poet (1850-1894)

His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it. 

~ Lois McMaster Bujold, writer (b. 1949)

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true. 

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer (1804-1864)

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. 

~ Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797)

Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent. 

~ Horace Walpole, novelist and essayist (1717-1797)

In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs. 

~ Daniel J Boorstin, historian, professor, attorney, and writer (1914-2004)

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize. 

~ Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen. 

~ Jerome K. Jerome, humorist and playwright (1859-1927)

The sense of wishing to be known only for what one really is is like putting on an old, easy, comfortable garment. You are no longer afraid of anybody or anything. You say to yourself, 'Here I am --- just so ugly, dull, poor, beautiful, rich, interesting, amusing, ridiculous -- take me or leave me.' And how absolutely beautiful it is to be doing only what lies within your own capabilities and is part of your own nature. It is like a great burden rolled off a man's back when he comes to want to appear nothing that he is not, to take out of life only what is truly his own. 

~ David Grayson, journalist and author (1870-1946)

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people. 

~ Virginia Woolf, writer (1882-1941)

When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong. 

~ Richard Dawkins, biologist and author (b. 1941)

Truth never damages a cause that is just. 

~ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation. 

~ Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

We all have to rise in the end, not just one or two who were smart enough, had will enough for their own salvation, but all the halt, the maimed and the blind of us which is most of us. 

~ Maureen Duffy, poet, playwright, and novelist (b. 1933)

Be humble for you are made of Earth. Be noble for you are made of stars. 

~ Serbian proverb 

Today is a new day. Hiding from your history only shackles you to it. We can't undo a single thing we have ever done, but we can make decisions today that propel us to the life we want and towards the healing we need.

~  Steve Maraboli

We saw men haying far off in the meadow, their heads waving like the grass which they cut. In the distance the wind seemed to bend all alike. 

~ Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

You can't do anything with anybody's body to make it dirty to me. Six people, eight people, one person -- you can do only one thing to make it dirty: kill it. Hiroshima was dirty.

~ Lenny Bruce, comedian and social critic (1925-1966) 

The sick do not ask if the hand that smooths their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin. 

~ Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)

I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could. 

~ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life -- the sick, the needy and the handicapped. 

~ Hubert Horatio Humphrey, US Vice President (1911-1978)

Death destroys the body, as the scaffolding is destroyed after the building is up and finished. And he whose building is up rejoices at the destruction of the scaffolding and of the body. 

~ Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

The worst kind of people are those who confuse kindness for weakness. 

~ Werner Makowski, banker (b. 1929)

Where the light is brightest, the shadows are deepest. 

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832)

I think that to get under the surface and really appreciate the beauty of a country, one has to go there poor. 

~ Grace Moore, actress and singer (1898-1947)

The late F.W.H. Myers used to tell how he asked a man at a dinner table what he thought would happen to him when he died. The man tried to ignore the question, but on being pressed, replied: "Oh well, I suppose I shall inherit eternal bliss, but I wish you wouldn't talk about such unpleasant subjects."

~ Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970) 

Nature never said to me: Do not be poor. Still less did she say: Be rich. Her cry to me was always: Be independent. 

~ Nicolas de Chamfort, writer (1741-1794)

The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air-conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them. The mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night. 

~ Jean Baudrillard, sociologist and philosopher (1929-2007)

What is the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on. 

 ~ Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

Few are the giants of the soul who actually feel that the human race is their family circle. 

~ Freya Stark, explorer and writer (1893-1993)

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death. 

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer (1804-1864)

Between truth and the search for truth, I opt for the second. 

~ Bernard Berenson, art historian (1865-1959)

Who knows what Columbus would have discovered if America hadn't got in the way. 

 ~ Stanislaw J. Lec, poet and aphorist (1909-1966)

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. 

~ Henry Adams, historian and teacher (1838-1918) 

In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away. 
~ T.S. Eliot, poet (1888-1965)

I wish I could have known earlier that you have all the time you'll need right up to the day you die. 
~ William Wiley, artist (b. 1937)

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. 

~ Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924)

Whenever books are burned men also in the end are burned. 

~ Heinrich Heine, poet, journalist, and essayist (1797-1856)

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when you were not: that gives us no concern. Why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be? To die is only to be as we were before we were born. 

 ~ William Hazlitt, essayist (1778-1830)

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. 

 ~ Susan Ertz, author (1894-1985)

As to conforming outwardly and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that. 

~ Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. 

~ James Baldwin, writer (1924-1987)

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed. 

~ Herman Melville, novelist and poet (1819-1891)

Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone. 

~ Czeslaw Milosz, poet and novelist (1911-2004)

To blame the poor for subsisting on welfare has no justice unless we are also willing to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is. Taken individual by individual, it is likely that there's more idleness and abuse of government favors among the economically privileged than among the ranks of the disadvantaged. 

~ Norman Mailer, author (1923-2007)

If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair. Despair is for those who expect to live forever. I no longer do. 

 ~ Erica Jong, writer (b. 1942)

The tragedy in the lives of most of us is that we go through life walking down a high-walled land with people of our own kind, the same economic situation, the same national background and education and religious outlook. And beyond those walls, all humanity lies, unknown and unseen, and untouched by our restricted and impoverished lives. 

~ Florence Luscomb, architect and suffragist (1887-1985)

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker. 
~ Helen Adams Keller, lecturer and author (1880-1968 )

In the cellars of the night, when the mind starts moving around old trunks of bad times, the pain of this and the shame of that, the memory of a small boldness is a hand to hold. 

~ John Leonard, critic (1939-2008)

The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it. 

~ Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
~  Martin Luther King, Jr.

Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

We establish no religion in this country. We command no worship. We mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are and must remain separate. 

~ Ronald Reagan, 40th US President (1911-2004)

Our perception that we have "no time" is one of the distinctive marks of modern Western culture. 

~ Margaret Visser, writer and broadcaster (b. 1940)

Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things. 

~ Jean Baudrillard, sociologist and philosopher (1929-2007)

We should tackle reality in a slightly jokey way, otherwise we miss its point. 

~ Lawrence Durrell, novelist, poet, and playwright (1912-1990) 

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise. 

~ Alden Nowlan, poet, novelist, and playwright (1933-1983) 

The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings. 

~ William Hazlitt, essayist (1778-1830)

Ah, good taste, what a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness. 

~ Pablo Picasso, painter and sculptor (1881-1973)

The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding, and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

~  Novelist and Nobel laureate John Steinbeck (1902-1968).

Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions. 

~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., novelist (1922-2007)

There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. 

~ Pierre Bayle, philosopher and writer (1647-1706)

Don't be yourself. Be someone a little nicer. 

~ Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983)

Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions. 

~ Frank Lloyd Wright, architect (1867-1959)

Elvira always lied first to herself before she lied to anybody else, since this gave her a conviction of moral honesty. 

~ Phyllis Bottome, novelist (1884-1963)

The epitaph that I would write for history would say: I conceal nothing. It is not enough not to lie. One should strive not to lie in a negative sense by remaining silent. 

~ Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

We are far more concerned about the desecration of the flag than we are about the desecration of our land.  

~ Wendell Berry, farmer and author (b. 1934)

The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed. 

~ Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)

Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you. 

~ Annie Dillard, author (b. 1945)

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to -- if there are no doors or windows -- he walks through a wall. 

~ Bernard Malamud, novelist and short-story writer (1914-1986)

Men are the devils of the earth and the animals are its tormented souls. 

~ Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (1788-1860)

When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist. 

~ Helder Camara, archbishop (1909-1999)

Love: a temporary insanity, curable by marriage.  ~ Ambrose Bierce, author and editor (1842-1914)

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of. 

~ Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)

Since my house burned down  , I now own a better view , of the rising moon. 

~ Mizuta Masahide, poet and samurai (1657-1723)

The arrow has to draw back to fly ahead.  ~ Proverb

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true. 

~ H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy. 

~ Fran Lebowitz, author (b. 1950)

The basis of all animal rights should be the Golden Rule: we should treat them as we would wish them to treat us, were any other species in our dominant position. 

~ Christine Stevens, activist (1918-2002)

We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable. 

~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn, novelist, Nobel laureate (1918-2008)

Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings. 

~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, psychiatrist and author (1926-2004)

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage. 

~ Ray Bradbury, writer (1920-2012)

The cure for anything is salt water -- sweat, tears, or the sea. 

~ Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen), author (1885-1962)

The ring always believes that the finger lives for it. 

~ Malcolm De Chazal, writer and painter (1902-1981) 

In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see. 

~ Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (b. 1928)

Lovemaking is radical, while marriage is conservative. 

~ Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering. 

~ Jane Austen, novelist (1775-1817)

The words a father speaks to his children in the privacy of the home are not overheard at the time, but, as in whispering galleries, they will be clearly heard at the end and by posterity. 

~ Jean Paul Richter, writer (1763-1825)

There is no doubt that I have lots of words inside me; but at moments, like rush-hour traffic at the mouth of a tunnel, they jam. 

~ John Updike, writer (1932-2009)

Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday. 

~ Thornton Wilder, writer (1897-1975)

The church says: The body is a sin. Science says: The body is a machine. Advertising says: The body is a business. The body says: I am a fiesta. 

~ Eduardo Galeano, journalist and novelist (b. 1940)

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring. 

~ Martin Luther King, Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968)

Although the connections are not always obvious, personal change is inseparable from social and political change. 

~ Harriet Lerner, psychologist (b. 1944

Without the freedom to criticize, there is no true praise. 

~ Pierre Beaumarchais, playwright (1732-1799)

When one guy sees an invisible man, he's a nut case; ten people see him, it's a cult; ten million people see him, it's a respected religion. 

~ Richard Jeni, comedian and actor (1957-2007)

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. 

~ Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965)

If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good. 

~ Thornton Wilder, writer (1897-1975)

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow. 

~ Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)

The vine that has grown old on an old tree falls with the ruin of that tree and through that bad companionship must perish with it. 

~ Leonardo da Vinci, painter, engineer, musician, and scientist (1452-1519)

You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave.

~ Billie Holiday, jazz singer and songwriter (1915-1959)

Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.

~ William James, psychologist and philosopher (1842-1910)

Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old; seek what they sought.

~ Matsuo Basho, poet (1644-1694)

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. Barrie, novelist and playwright (1860-1937)

Life is an adventure in forgiveness. 

~ Norman Cousins, author and editor (1915-1990)

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

~ Leo Buscaglia, author (1924-1998)

The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.

~ Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, professor, attorney, and writer (1914-2004)

How would you describe the difference between modern war and modern industry -- between, say, bombing and strip mining, or between chemical warfare and chemical manufacturing? The difference seems to be only that in war the victimization of humans is directly intentional and in industry it is "accepted" as a "trade-off".

~ Wendell Berry, farmer, author (b.1934)

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness. 

~ John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900)

People change and forget to tell each other. 

~ Lillian Hellman, playwright (1905-1984)

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. 

~ Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892)

Our chief want in life, is, somebody who shall make us do what we can. 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

The quality of everything we do: our physical actions, our verbal actions, and even our mental actions, depends on our motivation. 

 ~ Dalai Lama

I know people who only feel alive when they are comparing, complaining, judging.

~ Paulo Coelho

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. 

~ Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. 

~ Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it. 

~ Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745)

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)

In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have. 

~ Lee Iacocca, automobile executive (b. 1924)

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. 

~ Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. 

~ Charles de Montesquieu, philosopher and writer (1689-1755)

Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher. 

~ Japanese proverb

Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor.

~ James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961)

One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it.

~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968)

No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.

~ Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997)

Sometimes love isn't fireworks, sometimes love just comes softly.

~ Janette Oke

That sorrow which is the harbinger of joy is preferable to the joy which is followed by sorrow. 

~ Saadi, poet (c.1213-1291) [Gulistan]

Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface; he, however, who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice. 

~ Washington Irving, writer (1783-1859)

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary. 

~ Pablo Picasso, painter, and sculptor (1881-1973)

Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. 

~  President Snow

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs. 

~ Max Beerbohm, essayist, parodist, and caricaturist (1872-1956)

One of the things I like about the computer that I use is that I can write a program on it or I can download a program on to it and run it. That’s kind of important to me, and that’s also kind of important to the whole future of the Internet… obviously a closed platform is a serious brake on innovation.

~ Tim Berners-Lee

We’re going from a species that used to use only resources within a day’s walk, to a species that has access [to resources] on our planet to a species now that has access to the resources in our solar system.

~  Peter Diamandis

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. 

~ Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892)

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs. 

~ Joseph Addison, essayist and poet (1672-1719)

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure." 

~ H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956) 

The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts... Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? 

~ John Muir, naturalist and explorer (1838-1914)

What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse. 

~ Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

~  William James

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. 
~ Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965)

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best -- and therefore never scrutinize or question. 
~ Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist, biologist, author (1941-2002) 

It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them. 
~ Cesare Beccaria, philosopher and politician (1738-1794) 

Everyone, in some small sacred sanctuary of the self, is nuts. 
~ Leo Rosten, author (1908-1997) 

If words are to enter men's minds and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds.
~ J.B. Phillips, writer and clergyman (1906-1982) 

Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. 

~ William Arthur Ward, college administrator, writer (1921-1994) 

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely. 
~ Erma Bombeck, author (1927-1996)

Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass.
~ Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE) 

Ambition is like hunger; it obeys no law but its appetite. 

 ~ Josh Billings, columnist and humorist (1818-1885)

Although men flatter themselves with their great actions, they are not so often the result of a great design as of chance. 

~ Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld, moralist (1613-1680)

It has been said that a pretty face is a passport. But it's not, it's a visa, and it runs out fast. 

~ Julie Burchill, writer and journalist (b. 1959) 

There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man. 

~ Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE)

A superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions. 

~ Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)

What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.

~ George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950) 

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy -- sun, wind and tide. ... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.

~ Thomas Edison, inventor (1847-1931)

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play. 
~ Heraclitus, philosopher (500 BCE) 

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

~  Mark Twain

If what you are getting online is for free, you are not the customer, you are the product. 

~ Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet law (b. 1969)

What new move could you step into that would lift you into the realm of extraordinary – remarkable - world-class?

~ Robin Sharma

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

~  Mark Twain

Hate is a dead thing. Who of you would be a tomb? 
~ Kahlil Gibran, poet and artist (1883-1931) 

A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world. 

~ John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704) 

When you see a man led to prison say in your heart, "Mayhap he is escaping from a narrower prison." And when you see a man drunken say in your heart, "Mayhap he sought escape from something still more unbeautiful."

~ Kahlil Gibran, poet and artist (1883-1931) 

Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings.

~ Alice Miller, psychologist and author (1923-2010)

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the human heart can hold. 

~ Zelda Fitzgerald, novelist (1900-1948) 

Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it.

~ Paul Fussell, historian, author, and professor (b. 1924)

It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently, honorably, and justly; or to live prudently, honorably, and justly, without living pleasurably.

~ Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)

We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us. 

~ Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus), rhetorician (c. 35-100)