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Quotes
Historical Famous Quotes is a great reference and resource of quotes from films, shows, movies, history, famous people, leaders, stars and literature, including quotations on life, love, friendship, happy, sad, proverbs, sayings, popular and funny quotes, as well as short and long inspirational quotes. Great for entertainment, essays, and guidance in your own life.
Robert
About Author: n/a
Quotes:First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.
Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.
I have the heart of a child. I keep it in a jar on my shelf.
A book of quotations . . . can never be complete.
Never raise your hand to your children; it leaves your midsection unprotected.
You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.
There are tones of voices that mean more than words.
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
An ardent supporter of the hometown team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens.
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.
That old saw about the early bird just proves that the worm should have stayed in bed.
There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on.
Streets full of water; please advise.
Belief is the death of intelligence.
Only the madman is absolutely sure.
Love is an irresistable desire to be irresistably desired.
Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.
The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
A motion to adjourn is always in order.
If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawer.
Finance is the art of passing currency from hand to hand until it finally disappears.
People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy a half slug who must tighten his belt.
A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.
Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance.
Cogito ergo dim sum. (Therefore I think these are pork buns.)
Love will find a lay.
The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.
In order to preserve your self-respect, it is sometimes necessary to lie and cheat.
Nobody ever committed suicide while reading a good book, but many have while trying to write one.
There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money either.
If you stay in Beverly Hills too long you become a Mercedes.
Human war has been the most successful of our cultural traditions.
Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
As it is more blessed to give than receive, so it must be more blessed to receive than to give back.
Marriage: a long conversation chequered by disputes.
Tell us your phobias, and we will tell you what you are afraid of.
Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.
The pencil sharpener is about as far as I have ever got in operating a complicated piece of machinery with any success.
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
Mathematics has given economics rigor, but alas, also mortis.
A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.
...for no man lives in the external truth among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and the storied wall.
Strike the tent.
An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.
A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the intrusion.
It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condenced, the deeper they burn.
The friendly cow all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might;
to eat with apple tart.
It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.
Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will break our hearts...
Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.
If the automobile had followed the same development cyclee as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside."
An apprentice carpenter may want only a hammer and saw, but a master craftsman employs many precision tools. Computer programming likewise requires sophisticated tools to cope with the complexity of real applications, and only practice with these tools will build skill in their use.
I take my children everywhere, but they always find their way back home.
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
To err is human--and to blame it on a computer is even more so.
Finance is the art of passing money from hand to hand until it finally disappears.
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.
As for me, except for an occasional heart attack, I feel as young as I ever did.
If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometimes fight it out or perish. And if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?
Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.
Do not follow where the path may lead...Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
A poet that reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
The greatest productive force is human selfishness.
Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius.
Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.
Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
Envy can be a positive motivator. Let it inspire you to work harder for what you want.
Not wanting to die was another universal constant, it seemed.
Honor does not have to be defended.
Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.
General principles should not be based on exceptional cases.
The right things to do are those that keep our violence in abeyance; the wrong things are those that bring it to the fore.
How do you define God? Like this. A God I could understand, at least potentially, was infinitely more interesting and relevant than one that defied comprehension.
The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence.
Brains, like hearts, go where they are appreciated.
My business is not to remake myself, But make the absolute best of what God made.
Doing a thing well is often a waste of time.
It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.
There are too many people, and too few human beings.
To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.
There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.
He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities.
A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.
Even though quality cannot be defined, you know what quality is.
Your most precious possession is not your financial assets. Your most precious possession is the people you have working there, and what they carry around in their heads, and their ability to work together.
A leader is someone who steps back from the entire system and tries to build a more collaborative, more innovative system that will work over the long term.
History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.
It is a good idea to be ambitious, to have goals, to want to be good at what you do, but it is a terrible mistake to let drive and ambition get in the way of treating people with kindness and decency. The point is no that they will then be nice to you. It is that you will feel better about yourself.
If there be any truer message of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.
Keep your fears to yourself, but share your inspiration with others.
A friend should be one in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and its sincerity.
What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.
To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end of life.
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.
I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
It is easy to be a moral perfectionist when one is politically unaccountable.
No man is useless while he has a friend.
To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
As pity moved into that hole inside her, she discovered how distant pity was from hate, how very far it was from love.
More than ever, the creation of the ridiculous is almost impossible because of the competition it receives from reality.
Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.
If your morals make you dreary, depend on it , they are wrong.
Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
What happens when the future has come and gone?
Free advice is worth the price.
The best way out is always through.
Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.
Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.
Education is a kind of continuing dialogue, and a dialogue assumes, in the nature of the case, different points of view.
There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments, there are consequences.
Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man.
The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.
Ignorance is not innocence but sin.
I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.
Hence it is clear how much more cruel the pen is than the sword.
(Hinc Gham Sit Calmus Saevior Ense Patet)
Grow old along with me the best is yet to be.
I conceive the essential task of religion to be "to develop the consciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind".
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Oh would some power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as others see us
Life is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain.
The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
Anyone who clings to the historically untrue - and thoroughly immoral - doctrine that violence never settles anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler would referee. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forgot this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and there freedoms.
No one can be right all of the time, but it helps to be right most of the time.
Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
A promise made is a debt unpaid.
Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.
There is no slavery but ignorance.
Ah! the clock is always slow;
It is later than you think.
We dance in a circle and suppose, while the secret sits in the middle and knows.
People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true.
The only thing sadder than a battle won is a battle lost.
Now we are all sons of bitches.
Life is short. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly.
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
...simple fact that any land looks like Eden after months at sea.
The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish.
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishfull thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.
What is a kiss? Why this, as some approve:
The sure, sweet cement, glue, and lime of love.
If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.
Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.
To play it safe is not to play.
Why comes temptation, but for man to meet and master and crouch beneath his foot, and so be pedestaled in triumph?
Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.
Passion is the quickest to develop, and the quickest to fade. Intimacy develops more slowly, and commitment more gradually still.
A friend is a gift you give yourself.
I think that their flight from and hatred of technology is self-defeating. The Buddha rests quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer of the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha--which is to demean oneself.
The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be.
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.
Many a promising career has been wrecked by marrying the wrong sort of woman. The right sort of woman can distinguish between Creative Lassitude and plain shiftlessness.
Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
Under the influence of art the walls expand, the roof rises, and it becomes a temple.
The talent is in the choices.
The people of the United States, perhaps more than any other nation in history, love to abase themselves and proclaim their unworthiness, and seem to find refreshment in doing so... That is a dark frivolity, but still frivolity.
There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.
O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.
(O would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us.)
I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an officer resigns a commission.
Do you want to know the secret of pain? If you just stop feeling it, you can start to use it.
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.
The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.
To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.
Each time someone stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.
To fail to plan is to plan to fail.
We are all travelers in the wilderness of the World, and the best that we can find in our travels is an honest friend.
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
Wine is bottled poetry.
A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
If we are immortal it is a fact in nature, and we are not indebted to priests for it, nor to bibles for it, and it cannot be destroyed by unbelief.
The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.
To be a good soldier, you must love the army. To be a good commander, you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love.
To be matter of fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy -- and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful.
Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.
Many an optimist has become rich by buying out a pessimist.
Specialization is for insects.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?
In an information world where we all have someday to say it is important to remember that sometimes we need to listen.
If we could only share our hopes, our dreams, our disappointments, our fears, our achievements, and our discoveries.... the world would be a little kinder and a lot more forgiving.
I have been like a child walking along the shore line. Quickly discarding one sea shell for another of more outward beauty-- never to know the pearl within!
Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence.
Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.
The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it contains until it destroys.
How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven.
A fool cannot be protected from his folly. If you attempt to do so, you will not only arouse his animosity but also you will be attempting to deprive him of whatever benefit he is capable of deriving from experience. Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Premenstrual Syndrome: Just before their periods women behave the way men do all the time.
A pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun - and neither can stop the march of events.
Remind me to write an article on the compulsive reading of news. The theme will be that most neuroses can be traced to the unhealthy habit of wallowing in the troubles of five billion strangers.
The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes are mistaken for people of importance.
The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.
The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.
Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live.
Any fool can tell the truth; it takes talent to lie well.
Life is a dream from which we must wake before we can dream again.
We all make our limits, and we set them further out than we have any right.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
Duty then is the sublimest word in the English language. You should do your duty in all things. You can never do more. You should never wish to do less.
Each man is his own prisoner, in solitary confinement for life.
How many pessimists end up by desiring the things they fear, in order to prove that they are right?
A friend is a present you give yourself.
That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.
A man without trust is a man without life.
Beauty holds more worth than gold.
Death is as light as a feather; duty as heavy as a mountain.
Hardness shatters; strength endures.
On the heights, all paths are paved with daggers.
Hammer the iron that lies on your anvil instead of daydreaming about working silver.
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.... Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love the greater the jealousy.
To err is human, to purr is feline.
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.
If there is another world, he lives in bliss. If there is none, he made the best of this.
I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind... At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme, I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy, and wise in spite of themselves.
I think that the Communist Party as a political organization is of no danger to the United States. It has no following and has been disregarded by the American people for many, many years.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Only the insane is absolutely certain.
The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
There are no clear paths. Only pitfalls and tripwires and darkness.
Duty, then, is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less.
The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.
It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.
Getting caught is the mother of invention.
Learning to dislike children at an early age saves a lot of expense and aggravation later in life.
Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.
A good conscience is a continual feast.
The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect.
Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
The most successful businessman is the man who holds onto the old just as long as it is good, and grabs the new just as soon as it is better.
A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.
Courage without conscience is a wild beast.
All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned--the biggest word of all--look.
Old friends become bitter enemies on a sudden for toys and small offenses.
The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.
If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.
Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.
Everything is in a state of flux, including the status quo.
Partying is such sweet sorrow.
I want to find a voracious, small-minded predator and name it after the IRS.
If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion.
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
It sometimes seems that we have only to solve a thing greatly to get it.
Something must be done when you find an opposing set of desires of this kind well to the fore in your category of strong desires. You must set in operation a process of competition, from which one must emerge a victor and the other set be defeated.
Vision - It reaches beyond the thing that is, into the conception of what can be. Imagination gives you the picture. Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own.
The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.
Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible.
Friendship will not stand the strain of very much good advice for very long.
You cannot hold on to anything good. You must be continually giving - and getting. You cannot hold on to your seed. You must sow it - and reap anew. You cannot hold on to riches. You must use them and get other riches in return.
Examples is more forcible than precept. People look at my six days in the week to see what I mean on the seventh.
The innocence of the intention abates nothing of the mischief of the example.
To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.
The great successful men of the world have used their imaginations, they think ahead and create their mental picture, and then go to work materializing that picture in all its details, filling in here, adding a little there, altering this a bit and that bit, but steadily building, steadily building.
The entrepreneur is essentially a visualizer and an actualizer. He can visualize something, and when visualizes it he sees exactly how to make it happen.
The great thing is the start - to see an opportunity for service, and to start doing it, even though in the beginning you serve but a single customer - and him for nothing.
How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgments upon that which seems.
To be listened to is, generally speaking, a nearly unique experience for most people. It is enormously stimulating. It is small wonder that people who have been demanding all their lives to be heard so often fall speechless when confronted with one who gravely agrees to lend an ear. Man clamors for the freedom to express himself and for knowing that he counts. But once offered these conditions, he becomes frigthened.
In the republic of mediocrity genius is dangerous.
You can do anything you think you can. This knowledge is literally the gift of the gods, for through it you can solve every human problem. It should make of you an incurable optimist. It is the open door.
Would you who judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure, take this rule; whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things; in short; whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that is sin to you; however innocent it may be in itself.
No good poem, however confessional is may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
We hear much of a decent pride, a becoming proud, a noble pride, a laudable pride. Can that be decent, of which we ought to be ashamed? Can that be becoming, of which God has set forth the deformity? Can that be noble which God resists and is determined to abase? Can that be laudable, which God call abominable.
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishment - there are consequences.
Set priorities for your goals. A major part of successful living lies in the ability to put first things first. Indeed, the reason most major goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first.
A wise man looks upon men as he does on horses; all their comparisons of title, wealth, and place, he consider but as harness.
If you see yourself as prosperous, you will be. If you see yourself as continually hard up, that is exactly what you will be.
Every contrivance of man, every tool, every instrument, every utensil, every article designed for use, of each and every kind, evolved from a very simple beginning.
Solitude shows us what should be; society shows us what we are.
If you achieve success, you will get applause, and if you get applause, you will hear it. My advice to you concerning applause is this; enjoy it but never quite believe it.
There are mighty few people who think what they think they think.
If you are prepared, then you are able to feel confident.
This duality has been reflected in classical as well as modern literature as reason versus passion, or mind and the "unconscious." There are moments in each of our lives when our verbal-intellect suggests one course, and our "heart" or intuition, another.
An idea is a feat of association.
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